Topical Blog 4/14 10pm - People's Choice

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Based on your reading from Tuesday (Chapter 14), choose one specific topic from the chapter you read that you would like to know more about. Do some intensive googling to find high quality information about your topic. Provide a detailed summary of your topic, and include 3 high quality links to more information.

31 Comments

The major topic from chapter fourteen that I had the desire to know more about is ‘Dual-Instinct Theory’, which is the idea of the human body increasing or decreasing its energies through behavior. The theory was introduced by Freud in 1920, and it opened a new era in the development of psychoanalysis which gradually opened up a deeper understanding of aggressive phenomena in mental life. Freud emphasized 2 general categories for these behaviors, with the first category being ‘Instincts for Life’ or Eros. These instincts maintain life and insure individual and collective survival. Examples of these instincts are food, water, sex, air, and sleep. The second category is ‘Instincts for Death’ or Thanatos, which push an individual toward rest, inactivity, and energy conservation. Freud’s primary emphasis for this category was aggression. He explained that when a person’s self focused on that person only, that aggression manifests itself in self-criticism, sadism, depression, suicide, drug addiction, and unnecessary risk taking; whereas when a person’s self focuses on others aggression manifests itself in anger, hate, prejudice, verbal insult, cruelty, rivalry, revenge, murder, and war.
The first link I found while searching for more information on the theory is: http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=RifpSsKc3u8C&oi=fnd&pg=PA116&dq=instincts+for+life&ots=VkEdVcY6bL&sig=kCUqDTURCw8Od5uiFfUobrHPzRc#v=onepage&q=instincts%20for%20life&f=false. The article explains that Freud emphasized that the death instinct silently drives an individual toward death and that only through the activity of the life instinct was this “death-like force projected outwards”. The article further explains that the life and death instincts are mixed or fused in varying degrees, and that Freud claimed that the two forms hardly ever appeared in “a pure form”. The article or paper attempts to clarify the destructive aspects of narcissism and to relate that to Freud’s theory of the ‘fusion and diffusion of the life and death instincts’.
The second link I discovered while searching for additional information on the theory is: http://www.citeulike.org/group/1104/article/2548084. This article offers, in short, a counter-argument to Freud’s Dual-Instinct Theory and to Darwin’s survival of the fittest idea. The article explains how “humans behave with self-interest foremost in mind, but also in ways that do not harm, and sometimes even benefit, others”. The article proposes that this idea makes humans “good”, which is an idea that is certainly contrary to Freud’s beliefs. The article also proposes, as reason for its claims, that people have the desire live in ‘cooperative, complex societies’. Freud’s theories, in particular his Dual-Instinct Theory, certainly do not promote the idea of humans wanting to cooperate with one another, but rather that humans simply co-exist as long as each individual gets what they ultimately desire, survival. I think this article certainly presents some ideas which expose how Freud’s ideas are too narrow and extreme in my opinion.
The third article I discovered while searching for additional information on the theory is: http://www.pep-web.org/document.php?id=ijp.076.0871a. This article also contradicts a part of Freud’s Dual-Instinct Theory, and more specifically one of his key ideas involved in most of his work; which is the role of sexuality in terms of how it drives a person. The article points out that a very large majority of psychological presentations or research done since Freud’s time/influence on psychology, rarely ever directly mention/discuss sexuality, which strongly suggests the idea that many modern psychologists since Freud do not believe sexuality affects a person’s decision making with the everyday situations that they face. In summary the author states that “today’s sexuality is not Freud’s sexuality”. This article is relevant to Freud’s Dual-Instinct theory in that in the theory Freud included sex as one of an individual’s key instincts in maintaining individual and species survival.

One thing that I have always been interested in was the unconscious mind. After reading chapter fourteen I learned some good information about it. I would like to learn a little more about it, so I’m going to use unconsciousness for my topic. Each one of the three articles gave me a new definition and understanding on what the unconsciousness is.
The unconscious mind has the big responsibility to keep the body running. It’s in charge of our heart rates, digestion and blood pressure. It’s also the source of our memory of events and emotions. According to the article, it is also the connection of the spirit and each other.
Here is something interesting that I learned. Imagination is the communication between the consciousness and unconsciousness. I takes material that goes on in the unconscious mind and comes into awareness in the conscious mind. This is where daydreaming comes from. This can also be reversed. The conscious mind uses imagination to correspond with an unconscious mind. During this interaction, the conscious mind will send suggestions to the unconscious mind about the wants and needs. Out of both of these, the unconscious mind will use imagination more than the conscious.
Imagination is one part of the unconscious mind, but so is dreaming. Dreaming can be a power experience. It can be very life like too, with all the sounds, visions and feelings that you can get from dreaming. Daydreaming comes from replaying dreams but instead of sleeping, it’s in an awaking state.
http://processcoaching.com/unconscious.html
The second article says that the unconscious mind is just a psychological process. This means it’s the things, such as events, that we do not realize are happening or going on. If it’s not in the “shot light” or right in front of you then its part of the unconscious mind.
Both the conscious mind and the unconscious mind can influence each other. They both create different thoughts, energy, and imagination. However, this can affect us as well. When encountered with an archetype, it can leave records of actions, images, and thoughts permanently imbedded. Each of these records are filed in the archetypal field. When an event like this happens again in the future, the mind will “default” events that have been lying around. When it “defaults”, it is the unconscious mind that starts to affect. http://www.trans4mind.com/jamesharveystout/unc-mind.htm
The last article starts off by saying that the unconscious mind has less limitation. An example that they use is a person under hypnosis. They say they can remember something traumatic while under. This simply means that events have been recorded, however, that doesn’t mean that it happened in the conscious state of mind. A scary thing that I learned from this article is that some people can remember surgery while under anesthesia. I do not want to remember that, in fact I don’t want to be under the knife at all! I hope I’m not one of these people! Some people even say they can remember their past life. That’s weird. After that the article goes into talking about three and four dimensional mind theories. That part gets confusing, but for the most part it did have a couple of good points in it.
http://www.trans4mind.com/personal_development/DimensionalViewpoints/unconsciousMind.htm

One of the major things from chapter 14 that I found interesting and would like to learn more about is the unconscious. According to Freud, the unconscious deals with repressed memories and is sometimes expressed through our dreams. I want to better understand the unconscious and its connection to repressed memories. Our unconscious is our motives and intentions that lie outside our everyday awareness. Freud views the unconscious as our mental storehouse of inaccessible instinctual impulses, repressed experiences, childhood (before language) memories, and strong but unfulfilled wishes and desires. Repressed memories are the idea that some memories are too powerful/painful to be reminded of, therefore our mind tucks it deeply inside our “unconscious.” Our unconscious does a great job of “protecting” us from these traumatic memories but sometimes they manifest themselves in our dreams. The unconscious is expressed within our dreams; therefore our dreams hold the key to better understanding our unconscious. http://www.skepdic.com/unconscious.html

This website http://allpsych.com/psychology101/ego.html depicts a very easy-to-read chart on Freud’s conception of the human psyche. (An Iceberg Metaphor) Freud believed that most of our underlying emotions, beliefs, feelings and impulses are not available at our conscious level. Our conscious only makes a up a small part of who we really are. Our conscious can be controlled by external forces much easier on a day-in-day-out basis than our unconscious. Everything that we are “aware of” is stored in our conscious. Our unconscious on the other hand is “learned/established” at a much earlier age. It is said to be established in early childhood and changes very little through adulthood. The third and final aspect of this chart is our preconscious, or better known as our subconscious. This is the part of us that can be accessed if provoked, but not part of our active conscious. It is on the verge of our conscious, but lies just beneath its surface. As the model depicts, Freud believed our psyche is that of an iceberg; the smallest part (our conscious) is above water, while both our preconscious and unconscious are larger parts of us, and lie beneath our surface.

The third website that I found interesting dealt with the reality of repressed memories. http://faculty.washington.edu/eloftus/Articles/lof93.htm Repression is one of the most haunting and shocking aspects in psychology. Repressed memories are also very controversial because not everyone believes in its authenticity. This article covers a landmark case in 1990 that went to trial in Redwood City, California. This case used a repressed memory that was buried for 20 years to convict Eileen Franklin’s father of murder in the first degree. Most cases these days do not involve murder, but rather sexual abuse as a young child. Although there are no scientific evidence to prove that repressed memories are authentic, they are accepted by many and number of diagnosed are hard to ignore.

In conclusion the unconscious and repressed memories are difficult to fully understand in the beginning, but gaining more background knowledge and reading more articles helps to validate in my mind that they exist and that they have a place in psychology and our courts.

Terms: the Unconscious, Repressed Memories, Human Psyche, Conscious, Preconscious.

I chose to find out more information on subliminal motivation and subliminal messages. I think this is interesting topic that is misunderstood and wildly mass produced. After googling subliminal motivation a ton of websites were available to improve success, motivation for students, self help, personal growth, hypnosis, mp3, cd's and various things to purchase that can help an individual with anything!
This website which has a legitimate appearance

http://www.subliminal-audio.com/cds/article_subliminal_learning.aspx
is contradictory to information in our text book. The website states "subliminal learning is a proven tool for behavioral modification." The author also states that subliminal learning is recommmended by leading psychologists. This is completely contradictory to the book stating "subliminal messages were not processed in a way that affected thoughts or behaviors". The book also states that, "researchers have tested whether people act on subliminal messages and found that people do not." The author of the website says that individuals that really desire change would have an easier time listening to the subliminal messages. This makes me think about somewhat of a placebo effect taking place. I think in a situation as this it reminds about the section of the book on suppression. The individual might try to suppress the thoughts they want to get rid of which would only give way to a rebound effect, so if they had doubts that the subliminal messages might not work they might try to suppress those feelings but inevitably fail.



http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2000994,00.html

This second website is an article from Time Magazine about recent article by Custers and Aart about the unconscious mind. This article is very interesting. It has alot of the same themes in the book about the unconscious mind. Custers and Aart believe they have found that subliminal advertising can be effective. From the examples they give I think it makes sense. They aren't saying that someone watches one commercial once and goes and buys whatever the subliminal message is but rather they stated that by examples, positive reward cues, and associations that over time you might have effects from the subliminal messages.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,920625,00.html
The last article I found is a very old article also on Time magazine. It speaks about having black boxes outside of stores and other buildings. The black boxes are sound mixers with music and messages in the music stating: "I am honest. I will not steal." These were places in other types of businesses and buildings as well. The article speaks about the popcorn sales which the book does as well. The article also gives other examples of subliminal messaging used by different companies.

The topic from chapter fourteen that I am most interested in is priming.

#1: http://web.ebscohost.com.proxy.lib.uni.edu/ehost/detail?vid=4&hid=106&sid=573351c2-f0a6-460c-b60a-49ea61313c54%40sessionmgr110&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=psyh&AN=2011-01134-005

This article dealt with the stroop effect. The stroop effect demonstrates reaction time of a task such as naming the color of a word that is printed in a different color. Doing this is harder and people make many more errors than if the color and printed name of the color were the same. Subjects in this experiment were primed with information of dyslexia. Dyslexia is a learning disability that affects a person's ability to fluently read, speak, and spell. This leads to difficulty with phonological awareness and decoding, rapid naming, and short term memory. Being primed for dyslexia before performing the stroop task caused the stroop effect to drop. According to the article, "...overall it suggests that the human cognitive system has more success in decreasing the influence of another automatic process via an automatic path rather than via an intentional path."

#2:
http://web.ebscohost.com.proxy.lib.uni.edu/ehost/detail?vid=4&hid=106&sid=573351c2-f0a6-460c-b60a-49ea61313c54%40sessionmgr110&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=psyh&AN=2011-99020-076

This study examined the effect one's perception of God had on his or her behavior and other's behavior regarding it as either sinful or not on a scale. One could either have a loving or punishing view of God. The participants were asked to complete a priming task. This particular priming task was a word and sentence unscrambling task that portrayed different images of God. Next, they filled out a questionare which assesed their attitudes towards "immoral behaviors". It was proven that those participants who were primed with God being present in the scrambling sentence task were less prejudice than those who were primed with a lack of a figure in the sentences; however, those who already had a loving idea of God were intollerant of those same "immoral behavors". The article calls this a, "paradoxical set of findings" which I find truly interesting.

#3
http://web.ebscohost.com.proxy.lib.uni.edu/ehost/detail?vid=5&hid=106&sid=573351c2-f0a6-460c-b60a-49ea61313c54%40sessionmgr110&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=psyh&AN=2010-09990-001

The third article I found extremely interesting is titled: "Negative self-synchronization: Will I change to be like you when it is bad for me?"

The need to belong is a very strong and evident need within human history. This article discussed modifications of the self due to secure attachments with another person, even if the modifications of the self are negative for them. When one person wants their behavior or attitudes to be congruent with another, even if it is negative, it is referred to as negative self-synchronization. A total of four experiments were conducted to evaluate the phenomenon of negative self-synchronization. Participants who had very secure attachments with another were more likely to engage in negative self-synchronization than those who had a low secure attachment or no attachment at all. Because taking a part of someone else that is positive and helpful for you is not aversive, positive self-synchronization is not a concern as people are generally always trying to better themselves. When primed for secure attachment, negative self-synchronization was increased among subjects who had an insecure attachment with someone. On the contrary, priming secure participants with insecure attachment made negative self-synchronization decrease.

The topic from chapter fourteen that I am most interested in is priming.

#1: http://web.ebscohost.com.proxy.lib.uni.edu/ehost/detail?vid=4&hid=106&sid=573351c2-f0a6-460c-b60a-49ea61313c54%40sessionmgr110&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=psyh&AN=2011-01134-005

This article dealt with the stroop effect. The stroop effect demonstrates reaction time of a task such as naming the color of a word that is printed in a different color. Doing this is harder and people make many more errors than if the color and printed name of the color were the same. Subjects in this experiment were primed with information of dyslexia. Dyslexia is a learning disability that affects a person's ability to fluently read, speak, and spell. This leads to difficulty with phonological awareness and decoding, rapid naming, and short term memory. Being primed for dyslexia before performing the stroop task caused the stroop effect to drop. According to the article, "...overall it suggests that the human cognitive system has more success in decreasing the influence of another automatic process via an automatic path rather than via an intentional path."

#2:
http://web.ebscohost.com.proxy.lib.uni.edu/ehost/detail?vid=4&hid=106&sid=573351c2-f0a6-460c-b60a-49ea61313c54%40sessionmgr110&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=psyh&AN=2011-99020-076

This study examined the effect one's perception of God had on his or her behavior and other's behavior regarding it as either sinful or not on a scale. One could either have a loving or punishing view of God. The participants were asked to complete a priming task. This particular priming task was a word and sentence unscrambling task that portrayed different images of God. Next, they filled out a questionare which assesed their attitudes towards "immoral behaviors". It was proven that those participants who were primed with God being present in the scrambling sentence task were less prejudice than those who were primed with a lack of a figure in the sentences; however, those who already had a loving idea of God were intollerant of those same "immoral behavors". The article calls this a, "paradoxical set of findings" which I find truly interesting.

#3
http://web.ebscohost.com.proxy.lib.uni.edu/ehost/detail?vid=5&hid=106&sid=573351c2-f0a6-460c-b60a-49ea61313c54%40sessionmgr110&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=psyh&AN=2010-09990-001

The third article I found extremely interesting is titled: "Negative self-synchronization: Will I change to be like you when it is bad for me?"

The need to belong is a very strong and evident need within human history. This article discussed modifications of the self due to secure attachments with another person, even if the modifications of the self are negative for them. When one person wants their behavior or attitudes to be congruent with another, even if it is negative, it is referred to as negative self-synchronization. A total of four experiments were conducted to evaluate the phenomenon of negative self-synchronization. Participants who had very secure attachments with another were more likely to engage in negative self-synchronization than those who had a low secure attachment or no attachment at all. Because taking a part of someone else that is positive and helpful for you is not aversive, positive self-synchronization is not a concern as people are generally always trying to better themselves. When primed for secure attachment, negative self-synchronization was increased among subjects who had an insecure attachment with someone. On the contrary, priming secure participants with insecure attachment made negative self-synchronization decrease.

I'm going to use my April 5th freebie for this assignment.

For my topical blog I chose to do further research on object relations theory. Object relations studies how people relate to objects in order to satisfy their own emotional and psychological needs. It is a developmental process in which the person makes mental representations of themselves and their relationships with others. Research suggests that positive mental models of one's self predict self-reliance, social confidence, and self-esteem.
To explain the concept of object relations theory in more detail, Victor Daniels lays out several concepts. Object refers to what the subject relates to. These can be something that drives someone to love or fear. Representation is how the person perceives the object, or their subjective interpretation. An external object is the object in which the subject has invested energy in. An internal object "is one person's representation of another, such as a reflection of the child's way of relating to the mother". The self is the overall internal image, both conscious and unconscious. Self-representation is how one represents themselves in relation to the objects in their life. Object constancy refers to the maintenance of a relationship with an object. Splitting occurs when a person has two contradicting thoughts, and can only focus on one of them.
Object relations theory can be applied in many fields of psychology. Borderline personality disorder can be explained using object relations. This syndrome occurs when there is an event that offsets one's self and the objects around them. This happens during stage three, which occurs from 6-36 months of age. During this time, the infant differentiates between good and bad. If these relations fail to form, or the person relates all objects in their life as 'bad', borderline personality disorder may occur.
Research performed by Herbert, McCormack and Callahan (2010) examined the relationship between attachment dring childhood and depression. The attachment representations during childhood represent object relations theory. Results showed that early attachment styles in childhood did predict attachment styles across lifespan. This suggests that object relations theory is useful in attachment styles, as suggested in our textbook. What was not consistent however, was object relations and the onset of depressive symptoms.
While object relations theory is a good start for understanding one's own mental representations of themselves, it only accounts for the history of a person. It offers only a post hoc description. However, it seems as though this is one aspect of psychodynamic theory that continues to be researched even today.

http://www.sonoma.edu/users/d/daniels/objectrelations.html
http://www.montana.edu/hhd/facultyandstaff/publications/jchristopher/Kernberg's%20ORT%20(2001).pdf
http://psycnet.apa.org.proxy.lib.uni.edu/journals/pap/27/2/219.pdf

I decided to do further research on the topic of implicit motivation. According to the book, implicit motivation occurs unconsciously and affects our motives, emotions, attitudes, and judgments. Having the motivation for these things helps us meet our social needs of affiliation, achievement, power, and intimacy. People become energized when they act in a way is caused by implicit motives. For example, if a person is implicitly motivated to feel competent, they feel positive emotions when they do well on an assignment. Therefore, the person will continue doing these behaviors to feel good. The opposite of implicit motivation is explicit. Since implicit is unconscious, explicit is therefore conscious. It’s dependent on language and is aware of the rules and values of the individual and society. Implicit and explicit motivation are two different systems but they can work together to reach goals. For example, if a person has certain goals that are implicit, they can be brought forward into consciousness and made into an explicit goal. If the two systems do not work together, it can lead to several issues such as depression and high stress levels. This happens because when only one of the goals is reached, either the explicit or implicit systems will not be satisfied and leads to unhappiness. If, however, the person has self-control over their actions and goals, the incongruence of explicit and implicit motivation won’t lead to negative outcomes.

The strength of implicit motives can influence the ability to learn information. For example, a study was done in which participants participated in an implicit learning task. Some individuals with a high need for power (to do the best in the task) learned the material better because it was associated with them winning something. The other individuals with a high need for power that did poorly did not learn the material well. The individuals without a high need for power showed no difference. Therefore, implicit motivators affect learning. In another study, participants that had high levels of implicit motivation reported feeling happy when they made progress towards their goals but also reported feeling depressed when little progress was made. Explicit motivation also plays a part in the big picture because a person may have high implicit levels but low explicit motivation. Therefore, depressed feelings may result when goals are not met (because of the high implicit motivation). However, the study found that these individuals seemed to avoid negative affect because they realized their goals.

http://www.psych2.phil.uni-erlangen.de/~oschult/humanlab/research/assessment.htm

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WM0-4RJ3WB9-3&_user=724663&_coverDate=08%2F31%2F2008&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=gateway&_origin=gateway&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1717163794&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000040479&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=724663&md5=e7763083c62d5f5689a278dab888ba18&searchtype=a#secx34

http://www.psych-it.com.au/Psychlopedia/article.asp?id=302

I chose defense mechanisms as a topic I wanted to learn more about. Our text describes defense mechanisms as the way the ego buffers consciousness against potentially overwhelming levels of anxiety that originate from the id. They play a protective function against reality in our day to day lives. They exist in a hierarchal ordering from the least mature to the most mature. At the least mature level, defense mechanisms deny reality entirely or invent a new one. At the most mature they deal effectively with reality that causes anxiety to our ego.

I could ask a hundred questions about defense mechanisms but instead I just did a general search on PsychInfo to see what I could find. Thousands of results came up so I narrowed down a specific topic – individual differences in defense mechanisms. I found some great articles that helped me get some more information on this topic.

The first article was from The American Journal of Psychotherapy and was entitled “Gender differences in self-reported defense mechanisms: A study using the new Defense Style Questionnaire-60.” This study was used to determine whether there was a gender difference in the types of defense mechanisms employed by men and women. Indeed, it was found that men and women do differ in their defense styles, defense levels and the defense mechanisms they employ, however, overall neither group has a defense maturity level over the other one. Men tend to use projection defenses more than women. Women use more denial and identification type mechanisms. Additionally, the defense mechanism of affiliation is discussed in this article and it states that women are far more likely than men to use this defense mechanism.

http://web.ebscohost.com.proxy.lib.uni.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=46f5b36f-4f3f-4877-a7c2-9e3565d501c0%40sessionmgr114&vid=5&hid=104

The second article focused age-differences in defense mechanisms and was from the Journal of Personality and entitled “Longitudinal Study of Defense Mechanisms: Late Childhood to Late Adolescence.” There is research evidence that shows that use of defense mechanisms changes over the normal course of development. In this study, they found that when studying groups of 11, 12 and 18-year-olds the defenses of projection and identification were used more frequently than denial at all ages and that the use of both increased over the ages. However, projection was not used more than identification or vice versa. Interestingly, the defense mechanism of denial did begin to increase at age 18 though, but not before. The researchers felt this could be explained by the adolescent’s newfound belief that they have the power to create an environment that conforms to their wishes now.

http://web.ebscohost.com.proxy.lib.uni.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=10&hid=104&sid=46f5b36f-4f3f-4877-a7c2-9e3565d501c0%40sessionmgr114

In researching other topics related to defense mechanisms I began to wonder if defense mechanisms can be good. I found a really interesting article from Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior entitled “The Benefit of Forgetting Suicide Ideation” that gave me some great insight as to how defense mechanisms can work to our advantage at times. In this study, individuals who had previous suicidal ideation were examined four years later for the status of their mental health. Those individuals who did not recall their suicide ideation were experiencing far better mental health than the individuals who continued to recall it. Researchers hypothesized that these individuals (similar to sexual abuse victims or other trauma victims) had repressed these memories in order to protect their future selves. In this case, forgetting painful memories indeed led to better mental health. Although repression is a debated issue, it is very interesting to find that the individuals who either consciously or unconsciously forgot the painfulness of their previous suicide ideation were now experiencing better health than their cohorts that had not repressed those memories.

http://web.ebscohost.com.proxy.lib.uni.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=0c296832-60e9-4207-bcfb-08be6a6654e3%40sessionmgr110&vid=26&hid=104

One main thing that was talked about in chapter 14 that I wanted to find more about was the unconscious mind. The unconscious mind is a very powerful thing that a lot of us don’t really know much about. Freud introduced this idea to the world and some took on to his ideas and others didn’t really like them.

The first website I found is: http://www.skepdic.com/unconscious.html. This website says that the unconscious mind is the part of the brain where repressed feelings are stored. The reason why some of these feelings are repressed is because they are to painful to deal with and so the mind just stores them so we don’t recognize that they are still there. These memories often times manifest themselves in our dreams. A really interesting thing that is said on this website is that it is thought that the unconscious mind holds transcendent truths. There is no proof that this is true, but it is still really interesting to think about. The unconscious is distinguished between the conscious mind because we know what is in our conscious mind. We aren’t aware of what is in our unconscious mind.

Another website I found interesting was http://www.unlocksubconscious.com/. It talks about the subconscious mind, which is just another word for the unconscious mind. This websites says that subconsciousness is the mind that operates below your normal conscious. The subconscious is very powerful, but not in the sense that the subconscious is better than the conscious. Both the conscious and subconscious have different strengths and abilities to do different things. Our subconscious doesn’t have the ability to reason because this part of our mind can’t think. It depends entirely on the conscious mind to feed it information. The unconscious mind’s job is to execute what the conscious mind tells it to, whether the action be right or wrong. The unconscious mind is important in human vitality. It controls many life sustaining systems, such as blood circulation and the digestive system. The subconscious mind stores everything we do and it never forgets any of the information that is put into it. What you put in your subconscious mind is what will shape you for the rest of your life. The information in it will influence and motivate you to do certain things in your life.

The last website I found is: http://www.stevenaitchison.co.uk/blog/working-with-your-unconscious-mind/. We use our unconscious mind in our everyday lives. We use it when we are driving, working, and walking. This website says that the unconscious mind is what makes doing simple everyday tasks easy. This is a good example of one of the many things the unconscious mind does for us.

The topic I wanted to learn more about from Chapter 14 was subliminal motivation and subliminal messages. Subliminal motivation is when a stimulus is used for only a very brief duration of time to subliminally activate unconscious information. The unconscious might recognize and understand the message in some way but actually acting on the directive is a whole different matter.

The following website talks about how subliminal motivation is being used more widely in hospitals and with psychology professionals. It states that subliminal motivation is used to rewire the brain so you make better choices and live a better life. It has been used for people dealing with appetite and hunger, quitting smoking, and with anxiety issues. It explains how in each of those situations subliminal motivation was used.
http://www.secretsofmotivation.com/subliminal-motivation.html

This article from Scientific American talks about how half your brain can be subliminally motivated; this is known as split motivation. A study in Paris was done to prove that one hand may not be aware of what the other is doing. The subjects saw images of two different coins in four combinations (right eye, right hand; right eye, left hand; and vice versa) for only 17 milliseconds (just enough time to subliminal but not conscious processing). They were told to squeeze the grip for whatever hand they thought the coin was in. "The subjects squeezed harder when the larger coin was present if the hand grip was on the same side of the body and the eye that saw it." However, their squeezes did not change depending on what was present in front of the other eye. This proves that only one side of the brain was motivated at a time.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=split-motivation

In this article from Science Daily, they say that studies show the key to subliminal messaging is to keep it negative. People are able to process emotional information from subliminal images and information from negative images is easier to detect than positive images. There are evolutionary advantages to the rapidity of our processing of this information. Companies may use this newly found evidence in subliminal marketing for advertisements and public safety announcements.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090928095343.htm

If you want to become more productive in your daily life, this video apparently provides subliminal suggestions to do so.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybNmk7hd1I8

The topic I wanted to learn more about from Chapter 14 was subliminal motivation and subliminal messages. Subliminal motivation is when a stimulus is used for only a very brief duration of time to subliminally activate unconscious information. The unconscious might recognize and understand the message in some way but actually acting on the directive is a whole different matter.

The following website talks about how subliminal motivation is being used more widely in hospitals and with psychology professionals. It states that subliminal motivation is used to rewire the brain so you make better choices and live a better life. It has been used for people dealing with appetite and hunger, quitting smoking, and with anxiety issues. It explains how in each of those situations subliminal motivation was used.
http://www.secretsofmotivation.com/subliminal-motivation.html

This article from Scientific American talks about how half your brain can be subliminally motivated; this is known as split motivation. A study in Paris was done to prove that one hand may not be aware of what the other is doing. The subjects saw images of two different coins in four combinations (right eye, right hand; right eye, left hand; and vice versa) for only 17 milliseconds (just enough time to subliminal but not conscious processing). They were told to squeeze the grip for whatever hand they thought the coin was in. "The subjects squeezed harder when the larger coin was present if the hand grip was on the same side of the body and the eye that saw it." However, their squeezes did not change depending on what was present in front of the other eye. This proves that only one side of the brain was motivated at a time.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=split-motivation

In this article from Science Daily, they say that studies show the key to subliminal messaging is to keep it negative. People are able to process emotional information from subliminal images and information from negative images is easier to detect than positive images. There are evolutionary advantages to the rapidity of our processing of this information. Companies may use this newly found evidence in subliminal marketing for advertisements and public safety announcements.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090928095343.htm

If you want to become more productive in your daily life, this video apparently provides subliminal suggestions to do so.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybNmk7hd1I8

The topic I chose was priming because the study mentioned in class about aging and walking slower really interested me. Priming is the implicit memory effect in which exposure to a stimulus influences response to a later stimulus. It can occur following perceptual, semantic, or conceptual stimulus repetition

This particular article was about tv ads priming indivuals increased food intake. there were two seperate studies one with chihldren and one with adults. With the one with children, they were split into two groups and watched a 14min cartoon with 4 commercials that closely simulated real life. one groups commercials were non food while the otherone was. they accounted for indvidual differencs such as weight, race, sex, age, etc.. what they found was that the group that watched junk food commercials consumed more. they found the same results with the adult group except that males and people with restrained eeating styles ate more. They said that watching TV for only 30 min. per day whle snacking , would lead to a 94 calorie increase which adds up tp 10 lbs. a year. All of this from priming is still crazy to me
http://www.yale.edu/acmelab/articles/Harris_Bargh_Brownell_Health_Psych.pdf

This website was about a specific type of priming, masked priming (foster and davis) they consider it a purer form of priming in which the contribution of frontal lobes to priming has been largely, if not entirely eliminated. What is neat about this particular website is they give examples of how it looks instead of jst talking about it.
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~kforster/priming/index.htm

The last website was more hands on it was one where you had to press a certain letteer for either pleasent or unpleasent and then it would show you response time. It also had pictures for other tests I found it difficult to automatically respond beacuse I wanted to respond the wrong wawy beacuse of the previous images that i didnt actually see but i guess processed. it was so weird how that works.

http://www.millisecond.com/products/demos/subliminal/subliminal.web

Chapter 14 introduced a lot of new concepts. Of them, I would have to say that subliminal motivation was the most interesting. A stimulus is presented at a very weak level for a short duration of time is how the book defines it. This stimulus is picked up and possibly even acted upon on the unconscious level. The book gives some examples of where subliminal advertising did and did not work. I suppose I would like to know more about subliminal motivation.
This website: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090928095343.htm showed what works best for subliminal messages. The first fact the article says is that subliminal messages work best when the stimulus causes an emotional response. The findings also suggest that negative-emotion provoking stimuli actually work better than their positive counterparts.
It is important to not that many people try to use subliminal messages to improve some aspect of their lives. Form losing weight, to stop smoking, or just becoming successful. This website http://www.infinn.com/subliminal/howtowritegoodsubliminalmessages.html outlined the various was a subliminal message for self-help purposes should be made. The first rule to consider is that those messages work better if it is your own voice. Therefore, it is important for a person to make his/her own message. The message should also be in the 1st person, and it should be relatively short and simple. Another rule is that the message should be positive. I know this conflicts with the above information, but I don’t think anyone trying to wuit would like to tell themselves to keep smoking. The negative statements I think may get people to pay attention more or to make people want to change.
Another websites gives examples of famous subliminal advertising campaigns: http://komar.cs.stthomas.edu/qm425/fisher3.htm. It lists one study that has produced significant results. The world Pepsi flashed on the screen for 1/3000th of a second. Participants of that group reported getting thirsty more so than another group that just saw a random word. It also listed famous ones that Disney and Microsoft did in the past. The article ultimately makes the point that subliminal messages can be found in a lot of the media and that they will never go away. Which is odd because they have been banned officially in the 1970’s because the FCC thought they were a dishonest form of business. Personally, I believe that subliminal advertising is out there, but I don’t think its affecting or making people buy products as much as some sources say.

I chose to write about the “Ego Defenses” found in Chapter 14. This particular ego of defenses is known as the “Ego of Vulnerability”. We are in vulnerable situations when we walk into a new class, go on a date, etc. Every day can be/is a state of vulnerability for ourselves. What helps us get through those day-to-day vulnerabilities? Our body comes up with defense mechanisms to help us cope throughout our existence. These defense mechanisms help to before our consciousness against overwhelming levels of anxieties: conflict with the id (neurotic anxiety), superego demands (moral anxiety) and environmental dangers (realistic anxiety).

There are fourteen defense mechanisms that help with this protection process. They are: denial, fantasy, projection, displacement, identification, regression, reaction formation, rationalization, anticipation, humor and sublimation. Without these fourteen mechanisms, we would be in a constant state of anxiety throughout our lives because of the constant changes in internal and external realities. The two most “immature” levels of defense are denial and fantasy because the person who uses these is failing to recognize reality so they are living in some sort of a “fantasy world”. Projection is in the second level in which a person knows their reality but casts out its disturbing aspects away from themselves. In the third level, reaction and formation and rationalization are the most common. These particular defenses deal with the short term anxieties but not the long term ones. At the fourth level, the defenses are the most mature. It includes sublimation and humor.

I thought this was a very interesting chapter to read! It amazes me how our body is constantly putting up defenses throughout the day to buffer against anxieties that we may develop without it. I didn’t realize just how many different ways there were to “protect” ourselves from anxiety…but there are fourteen! These defenses all play an important part in our daily lives, and we often don’t even realize we are doing it when it’s actually happening.

http://allpsych.com/psychology101/defenses.html This website talks a lot about the ego defense mechanisms. It describes it as the ego having a difficult time making both the id and superego happy, so it then puts into defense one of the mechanisms. It lists the same defenses that book also listed and gave a description of each one of them. This particular website was very helpful and explained in even more detail what the book are described.

http://psychology.about.com/od/theoriesofpersonality/ss/defensemech.htm This website talked a lot more about the different anxieties: neurotic, reality, and moral. Neurotic Anxiety is an unconscious worry that we might lose control and this results in punishment for inappropriate behavior. Reality Anxiety is the fear of the real-world events and are usually easily identified. Moral Anxiety involves the fear of violating moral principles. I liked how this particular website gave more information on the different anxieties instead of just focusing on the defense mechanisms.

http://www.planetpsych.com/zPsychology_101/defense_mechanisms.htm This website just reinforced what the first website and the book already talked about. It listed out the different defense mechanisms and described each one. It also talked about the conflicts within the id impulses and between the wishes/needs of the ego and superego. The defense mechanisms than alter and distort a persons awareness of the original impulse and makes it more tolerable.

These three particular websites added a lot of good information to what I already read in the book. It described the information thoroughly and even added some more stuff to what the book described.

TERMS: ego defenses; defense mechanisms; neurotic anxieties; moral anxieties; environmental anxieties; denial; fantasy;

I chose to learn more about defense mechanisms. As we discussed in class on Tuesday, defense mechanisms are important in protecting our self image. An ego defense mechanism is important to keep us from being overwhelmed with anxiety. We also discussed how the id is a childlike wants and impulse feelings while our superego is our moral and rational thoughts. the ego is the happy medium and it also where we find the need for defense mechanisms. Essentially, defense mechanisms work by rationalizing the id impulses into rational ideas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_mechanism
Anna Freud, Sigmund Freud's daughter lists nine types of defense mechanisms.
1 - Denial is the refusal to accept that something happened or is happening. This is by far one of the most common defense mechanisms.
2 - Repression keeps information out of our conscious.
3- Displacement is when we take our frustrations out on someone else.
4 - Sublimation is when we convert our unacceptable behaviors into acceptable ones.
5 - Projection is putting our unacceptable feelings onto someone else.
6- Intellectualization works to reduce anxiety by thinking about things in a clinical way.
7- Rationalization works by explaining an unacceptable behavior in a rational way or form.
8 - Regression is when a stressful event occurs, you regress to acting in a manner you would have an earlier development.
9 - Reaction Formation is when you take up the opposite feelings or behaviors, correlating with what may be happening.
http://psychology.about.com/od/theoriesofpersonality/ss/defensemech_9.htm
On a side note, I know you don't like Freud and for that matter I am not a huge fan but I agree that he gave us grounds to start on and work forward from!
Finally, this website offered numerous other defense mechanisms which I think is helpful. It also doesn't surprised me how many more are being "discovered" because people will always find ways to avoid anxiety. It surrounds our every day life and sadly effects a lot of people.
http://www.coldbacon.com/defenses.html
It is interesting they listed acting out as one because that is often associated with children and ADHD but I find this a very likely answer for some children dealing with family issues. Autistic Fantasy is interesting because it seems a little hard to imagine excessive day dreaming, I categorize that as excessive boredom and little motivation. But my favorite is the idea of humor. I feel this fits my lifestyle somewhat. We can all think of a person or two who, whenever they feel nervous are often laughing at inappropriate situations or people. I am surprised at how man they actually have listed but I have to remember everyone is different!!

I chose to research subliminal motivation. OUr text states that in order to subliminally activate unconscious information, a stimulus must be presented for a very short period of time to a person without them knowing they are being shown the stimulus. According to our textbook, subliminal messages, or subliminal advertising doesn’t work. Also, researchers have tested whether people act on subliminal messages and found that people do not. Specifically related to subliminal audiotapes, the text states that researchers who tested the validity of these audiotapes found that the audiotapes did not work. Knowing this information, I figured I’d find a mix of websites saying they do and do not work. Overall, I think that the tapes don’t really work in the way the sellers say they do. I think it has a lot to do with the placebo effect and how people think they are getting ‘treatment’ but really they’re not but yet they still show improvement.
http://www.subliminal-tapes-self-improvement.com/
This website is all about subliminal audiotapes and self improvement/self growth. Customers can get tapes for a variety of issues: breaking bad habits, freedom from fears, stress management, weight loss, romance/sex, sports, health, learning, social relationships, etc. This website clearly wants to make people believe that subliminal audiotapes will help them fix their issues and I’m sure that many people believe it too. How do they work?—When you listen to the tapes you hear relaxing music which you get to choose (space travels, rainfall, or zen temple). Within the music are the subliminal message and according to the site, when you subconscious receives these messages over and over it ‘reprograms’ itself. Then if all goes as planned, the person will begin to make the appropriate changes to their behavior. The site also states that these tapes are safe for adults AND children….just in case you’re interested.
http://www.subliminal-audio.com/cds/article_subliminal_learning.aspx
According to this site, “Subliminal learning is a proven tool for behavioral modification and was recommended by leading psychologists, physicians and professionals worldwide.” This information contradicts what our textbook tells us. This site states that subliminal learning, or subliminal motivation, id not a fast process unless the person is very impressionable or very young. Also, when going through the tapes, the person will get more benefits out of the experience if they are in a positive mood and have a strong, determined desire to change. In each recording, this company uses what is called the 4-Part Encoding System which makes it more effective than other recordings out there: 1. binaural beats; 2. subliminal messages; 3. reverse messages; and 4. stereo confusion.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/6232801/Subliminal-advertising-really-does-work-claim-scientists.html
This is an article that supports the notion that subliminal messages work. In research done by a professor Lavie, participants were shown a series of works on a computer screen which were either positive, negative, or neutral. After each word, participants were asked to choose whether each word was positive, negative, or neutral. Researchers found that participants were most accurate when matching negative words. Levie believes that that this information may have implications for using subliminal messages in advertising, public service announcements, etc.

A topic within Chapter 13 that I thought was interesting was implicit motivation. Basically, implicit motivation is the unconscious thoughts and feelings we have about everything in our world. Unlike conscious thoughts and feelings, implicit motivators are out of our direct control; they happen in the split second when we are about to make a decision about a possible action. Due to the freedom implicit motivation has on our behaviors, it is interesting to me how it represents or inflicts itself in our lives. Therefore, I discovered three sources of information about implicit motivation to aide in understanding it further.

http://scan.oxfordjournals.org/content/3/4/333.full.pdf+html
The first article I read was about a study that wanted to know if “high-power perceiver’s” responded to angry and surprised faces differently than neutral faces or grey blocks. The study scanned participant’s brains to search for activation areas while participants were shown pictures of angry, surprised, neutral, or grey blocks. Like they thought they would find, when “high-power perceiver’s” viewed the angry faces, their brains activated in ways that would lead to a behavior or response to the face. These participants were implicitly motivated to behave in response to the angry face. The researches describe that this may be because the angry face is communicating that the participant must protect himself or herself and show their “dominance”. However, in there was less response for surprised faces and every less response for neutral or grey blocks. This is because these faces require less response and do not have as great of an affect on implicit motivation. Surprise activates more than neutral faces because surprise can often be a reward for people (they did something that took control from the other person, therefore the participant would be in control which is an incentive or benefit). Overall, facial expressions from others directly communicate with implicit motivation to enact behaviors that protect the self.

http://socialecology.uci.edu/files/users/eknowles/glaser2008.pdf
The second article was an interesting study that had participants use a computer simulation where they would shoot people who had guns. However, the ideas behind this was to see the difference in reaction time to shoot the person with the gun based on if they were black or white. The study was attempting to better understand implicit motivation and prejudice. Results of this study show that people who thought they were prejudice and also did not strongly believe that prejudice was bad, had a higher stereotype against the black men with guns in the game. This is the only combination that showed significant differences in shooting time. This is very interesting because only those people who are openly prejudice were the ones to vary. Based on this one study, most people simply don’t want to be shot and it doesn’t matter if they are white or black. This identifies that our implicit motivation is to stay safe at all cost; which comes before judgment of race or ethnicity.

http://www.psych-it.com.au/Psychlopedia/article.asp?id=302
In the last article I read discussed the important of compatibility between implicit and explicit motivation. It said that people are more harmonious if these two agree. For instance, if someone has a high need to be accepted and then in interacting with people they feel accepted, then their explicit behavior of creating that type of relationship meshes well with their implicit need for acceptance. Several research studies included in this article state that when people engaged and accomplished tasks (explicit behaviors) they were happy and their mood increased, but it only lasted if the person also held the accomplishment as an implicit goal as well. Overall, this study states that most of the time it is in the best interest of people’s wellbeing to have agreeing implicit and explicit motivators.

I was interested in defense mechanisms, specifically denial and displacement. Denial can be described as ignoring unpleasant signs to defend against the negative connections associated with it. According to http://web.ebscohost.com.library.hawkeyecollege.edu/ehost/detail?sid=9c26f0bf-da15-4f7e-8dbb-15f38847934f%40sessionmgr13&vid=5&hid=19&bdata=JmxvZ2luLmFzcCZzaXRlPWVob3N0LWxpdmUmc2NvcGU9c2l0ZQ%3d%3d#db=aph&AN=39002481 denial is commonly known as the first stage of grieving the loss of a loved one, and when coming to terms with a terminal illness. It is a way for the person to pretend like a situation does not exist, at least for a little while.
Denial is also a defensive mechanism for addictions. I couldn’t understand why the two were related until I continued reading and remembered that for most addictions the person is usually in denial that they have a problem. Dr. Garrett explains this further, along with other defense mechanisms for addiction at this site: http://www.bma-wellness.com/papers/Addiction_Defenses.html. In this case, denial helps a person continue with the addictive substance/habit because they tell themselves it is ok and that they can stop any time they want.
The other defense mechanism that is interesting is displacement. I think it is the one I feel like I see the most. It can best be described with the emotion of anger. Displacement occurs when a person gets angry at someone they are unable to respond back with anger. The angry person then releases the anger at the next convenient target. Therefore, it is taking an emotion and pushing it on to another person or object. This link http://web.ebscohost.com.library.hawkeyecollege.edu/ehost/detail?sid=9c26f0bf-da15-4f7e-8dbb-15f38847934f%40sessionmgr13&vid=5&hid=19&bdata=JmxvZ2luLmFzcCZzaXRlPWVob3N0LWxpdmUmc2NvcGU9c2l0ZQ%3d3d#db=aph&AN=1446388 discusses another term that correlates with displacement: scapegoating. This site proceeds to discuss another article that mentions there is information that negatively correlates the number of lynchings of black men in the 1930s and the price of cotton. As the price of cotton went up, farmers became angry and displaced their anger towards a different source, in this case taking it out on all men of a certain race.
Every person will at one point experience denial and displacement. These are normal defense mechanisms of the brain and a way of coping with anxiety. The trick will be figuring out how to control and overcome them which will lead back to well-being.
ME terms: ego defense, denial, displacement.

Imagine Times Square in 2100, we can not see the Coke ad or ads on Broadway musical, now in the place where the ad was displayed coca cola ads that last microsecond and we are not able perceives consciously. In these advertisements, much shorter than it takes to blink appear smiling children eating hamburgers at McDonald's, cars surrounded by beautiful scenery .... we can not know what we're seeing but scientists say that these ads influence our behavior, they call subliminal motivation.
But the question is, to what extent this may be true? It has been proven scientifically that a stimulus not detected by the subject may influence the execution of tasks carried out by this, but really the impact on our behavior is so big? Let's see ......
Manuel Froufe and cecilia schwartcz have shown that verbal messages included on videotape can enhance self-esteem, but no significant increase was found over the self in the control group than in the experimental group at the conclusion of this study is that only placebo effect occurs.
http://www.ucm.es/info/Psi/docs/journal/v4_n1_2001/art19.pdf

Became notorious subliminal advertising in 1957-through the publicity surrounding In Other study Mingle with the experiment of James Vicary, a private market researcher, Who Claim to Have Substantially INCREASED sales of Coca Cola and popcorn in a movie theater, by secretly and subliminally flashing the message "Drink Coca Cola" and "Eat popcorn." Nobody has replicated Vicary's Findings; historical study published've Never Been and Appears to Have Been a publicity hoax.In this article, we Argue That Vicary's fantasies do Have Some basis of reality. They Argue That subliminally priming a brand name for a dog drink That Increase the likelihood Participants will choose That drink, Given the Opportunity to do so. But importantly, as They Will Argue and Demonstrate, priming of a brand name for a drink will only choice Affect Behavior of People Who Are Thirsty (ie, Have a goal to drink) and Not of People Who Are Not thirsty
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WJB-4J557F1-1&_user=724663&_coverDate=11% 2F30% 2F2006 & _rdoc = 1 & _fmt = high & & _origin _orig = gateway = gateway & _docanchor _sort = d & = & view = c & _acct = C000040479 & _VERSION = 1 & _urlVersion = 0 & _userid = 724663 & md5 = 5aee46fa2e57e0fb3c432ce91129e6fa & searchtype = a
Somekh and Wilding noted that supraliminal level, the words "happy" (happy) and "sad" as well as their structural equivalents "harp" (bitch) and "sap" (fool) affected the impressions aware of a face emotionally inexpressive. Subliminal level, it was just the same but only the words "happy" and "sad." That is, in the first case, the subjects respond to "harpy" and "sap" as if the words "happy" and "sad."
Apparently these stimuli phenomenon is not present in consciousness, may influence some aspects of our behavior.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WNP-4B5JN94-G&_user=724663&_coverDate=01%2F31%2F2004&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=gateway&_origin=gateway&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1718843779&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000040479&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=724663&md5=3f0a9a868a8761ed652be2a15b44f1e2&searchtype=a#toc4
The conclusion of most articles is that while there is subliminal perception and influences our behavior influence is not as strong as that exerted by the stimulus and conscious thoughts.
Responding to the answer to me at first, will we see ads of microseconds in 2100? studies say no and my opinion is that the people of 2100 ads will continue to suffer as bad as our generation

I decided to do more research on object relations theory.
http://www.ahalmaas.com/Glossary/o/object_relations.htm
Object relation consists of three parts: self-representation, object-representation, and an affect. A representation is an image of the self or object, which can be visual, mental, emotional, or auditory. The affect is a link between the self-representation and object-representation and is expressed as an emotion. These representations together are images for the child, and they combine to make the child’s self image. This happens through a phase called separation-individuation process. The ego structure develops by internalizing images of self and others. The object in this process is usually a person that the child loves, and object relation is the mental representation of this relation. This website then discusses object relations and defense. If object relations include the concept of the Being, the ego structure, sense of self, separateness, and individuality all can function in defensive ways. The ego starts as a defensive structure, and it keeps some of this nature out of necessity. Autonomy is the best thing to reduce the defensive structure of the ego to make it more open for an intimate relationship. A positive object relation can be used against a negative object relation.
http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Object_Relations_Theory.aspx
Object relations theory is “those that place the internalization, structuralization and clinical reactivation of the earliest dyadic object relations at the center of their motivational formulations”. Internalization is the idea that in all interactions of the infant and child and parents, the child internalizes that relationship between the self and other rather than just a representation of the other. There are several different object relations theories, and the biggest thing separating them is Freud’s drive theory. This states that object relations are seen as replacing drives as the motivational system for human behavior. Some researchers combine the drive theory an objects relations and others replace the drive theory with objects relation. Another debate within this is the role and origin of aggression. Some people believe that aggression is a result of frustration, but others who agree more with Freud believe that we are born with aggression.
http://changingminds.org/disciplines/psychoanalysis/concepts/object_relations.htm
Object relations theory is a theory of relations between people, specifically between a mother and child. It states that we are driven to form relationships with others and if that fails early on, they will struggle later on with relationships. It also involves the relationship with internal and external objects. This affects gender identity, for example it is difficult for a boy to have a male gender identity if they first person that the boy identifies with is female. Some people that are credited with developing or advancing this idea are Karl Abraham and Melanie Klein. Klein felt that a child’s relation to the breast was important. As the child feeds, it feels full and nourished, and therefore feels love towards the breast. When the child is pulled of the breast before full or it doesn’t have enough milk, the child feels a type of hatred towards the milk. These feelings directed at the breast from the child are then directed to the mother. The baby feels extreme emotions, and they do not feel a mixture of emotions. If they are angry, they are purely angry, and they will pull away from the mother. If the child is happy, it will cuddle with the mother and be loving towards her. This shows the relationship between the object relations theory and attachment theory.

Like a lot of people have stated in previous blogs, I was also interested in getting more information on object relations theory. This focuses on the nature and development of mental representations of the self and others on the affective processes associated with these representations. It stems from how the bond of a child to it's caretaker becomes the template for self and other representations. I think this is interesting because the child/caretaker is the first relationship formed which would obviously seem to affect perhaps all relationships. The link provided below gives more detailed information on what object relations theory is all about.

http://www.sonoma.edu/users/d/daniels/objectrelations.html

It seems to make sense though, if a person is more engaging and affectionate one may be able to conclude what their relationship with their parent's might have been. On the contrary, someone who seems to be more closed off may not have had the most positive relationship. I wanted to see if there were actual studies testing this. While searching, I found a very interesting study on object relations theory and marital status.

http://www.oneplusone.org.uk/Publications/ReviewPapers/4%20-%20Theories%20of%20disenchantment.pdf

It found that people in relationships will have more distress if their relationships with primary caretaker was not the best. This is because they do not have a clear perception on how relationships should really be.

After looking over some more things, I found an interesting YouTube video that discussed eating disorders and object relations theory.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yv4tRdTpn5I&feature=related

He says that the relationships we develop in the early stages of our life, will determine how we act. This is the central idea behind object relations theory, but he applies this to eating disorders. He says that if either we lose a relationship or if their is turbulence in relationship, then a person (especially females) become more susceptible to eating disorders.

This theory somewhat reminds of the theory that people learn in therapy that it is all the mother's fault. Perhaps object relations theory is why people say this. The research I have read though seems to make sense, and I think it is the stepping stone to better theories like attachment theories.

4/5 freebie

In chapter 14 I was most interested in the psychodynamic theory and how an individual is always in a constant battle. This is the battle between the id and the ego. The ego represents the conscious and the id represents the unconscious.
One article I found discussed unconscious racism. When an individual will consider themselves to be anti racism but actually unconsciously expresses racist behavior in subtle ways. A series of tests were conducted and it was found that there is a strong association between white = good and black = bad even from the African Americans. Although these unconscious stereotypes are then overridden by that individual’s beliefs. So there is debate on whether or not this unconscious stereotype is actually affecting their behavior because they are able to override it with their conscious beliefs. However researchers do find that white individuals do display more negative nonverbal ques to minorities.

http://www.jstor.org.proxy.lib.uni.edu/stable
Does Unconscious Racism Exist?
Lincoln Quillian

I found another article on the topic of unconscious racism, only discussing how this can affect witness creditability. The article even discussed circumstances where judges with unconscious racism often disregard a minority’s alibi as not creditable and unreliable. Even testimonies have been excluded as unreliable on the belief that the judge was making a stereotypical judgment. This article touched on an actual case (Chambers vs. Mississippi) where the case was taken to supreme court because the judge had used the hearsay rule to exclude a relevant black witness’s testimony.

http://academic.udayton.edu/race/03justice/court03.htm

In the last article that I read psychologist are actually talking about using F.M.R.I. to detect this unconscious racism. This would of course be in the distant future and more research needs to be performed. I thought it was crazy the idea of testing jurors and judges to identify whether or not an individual is unconsciously racist. There were of course criticisms in this article as well. One of the most important ones being that even if we could detect if an individual was unconsciously racist does not mean they would act on it because they can override that with the conscious.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A03E1DF1531F932A25750C0A9619C8B63&pagewanted=9

The topic that I chose to write about is subliminal motivation. The book discusses subliminal motivation as a stimulus, presented at a very weak energy level. This would happen specifically so the conscious mind could not pick up on this message. However the unconscious mind would capture this message and it would effect motivation in a slight, but significant way.

One experiment was given to two groups of people and asked to rate an individual based on an oral description. Group A was shown messages that promote honesty while group B was shown messages that promote meanness. The control group was not shown any hidden messages. The results were that Group A described an honest person, group B described a mean person, while those presented with no messages displayed a normal response.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1559-1816.2002.tb01860.x/pdf

This represents an example of how subliminal motivation is best found in society. It is through subliminal advertizing. This is something that we have seen through the example found in the paper and the book that deals with soda and a movie theater snack.

A further common use for subliminal messages and motivation is self help. This self-improvement method has been tested by Greenwald, Spangenberg, Pratkanis, and Eskenazi. They have tested the effects of hidden messages on self-esteem and motivation.

http://faculty.washington.edu/agg/pdf/Gwald_Spang_Pratk_Esk_PsychSci_1991.OCR.pdf

Another study measured the simple act of squeezing a hand. This was something that the subjects had no conscious thought or motivation. They were simply squeezing, not trying to improve themselves or label a person. However, when shown coins of different values, the subjects exhibited the most squeezing action with the coins of higher values. The interesting part is that they had no memory of seeing the coins.

http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/subliminal-motivation.htm

I chose to Google the idea of suppression. Wikipedia says that, “Thought suppression is the process of deliberately trying to stop thinking about certain thoughts.” Surprisingly the Wikipedia page matches up perfectly with what we have learned in class. Chapter 14 discussed the white bear study (Wegner et al., 1987). In this study college students were asked not to think of a white bear. Participants were asked to ring a bell as a signal that the unwanted thought had accidentally popped into their mind. There was a lot of bell ringing as the participants experienced a ‘rebound effect’ in which the white bear was all that they could think about. But, there was much more to this story that was not discussed in our text book. “A second experiment replicated these findings and showed that subjects given a specific thought to use as a distracter during suppression were less likely to exhibit later preoccupation with the thought to be suppressed.” To me, this suggests that therapy involving thought suppression, for example obsessive compulsive therapy, could benefit by including healthy distractions. The full study can be found at:
http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~wegner/pdfs/Wegner,Schneider,Carter,&White%201987.pdf

The second research article also discussed how focused distractions are beneficial when trying to suppress thoughts. It claimed that thought suppression depended on the specific strategy used while trying to suppress the thought. This study used different experimental conditions: thought suppression, thought suppression with focused distractions, thought suppression confronting a reminder, and monitor only. The full article can be found at the following link:
http://www.ijpsy.com/volumen7/num3/173/analysis-of-the-efficacy-of-different-thought-EN.pdf

The third article that I found interesting was more about emotional suppression than actual thought suppression however it related much to Chapter 14 and discussed Freud’s follies and importance in this area. “Despite the substantial changes from Freud's original theory of pathogenesis that occurred over the ensuing decades, the idea that emotional inhibition may lead to psychological distress remains a central tenet of psychodynamic psychotherapy.” There were many articles pointing to suppression of emotions causing physical and mental health problems. More information can be found at:
http://spl.stanford.edu/pdfs/1997%20Journal%20of%20Abnormal%20Psychology%20%20-%20Hiding%20Feelings%20Acute%20Effects.pdf

I have seen the rebound effect at work when I quit smoking. The more I tried not to think about smoking, the more I thought about smoking. Focused distractions could be a good combination with behavioral therapy in smoking cessation.

Chapter 14’s topical blog-People’s choice
One of the most interesting topics in chapter fourteen is the implicit motivation because of all the complex interaction that go on outside our conscious awareness. This describes the motivational processes that are implied, indirect, but largely linked to our emotional experiences. This is why emotional reactions might predict behavior better than self report (Wiley, 2009).
For this reason I felt the need to check out Harvard’s Implicit Association Test (IAT). On their web site it states that people unwillingly or unknowingly give an answer to a question that is self-deceptive when the origins of our beliefs are largely unconscious and through the testing questions and based on speed a clear picture begins to emerge.
An example of a clear picture was made by my first test based on the advertisement of an unknown product. It read that people who have more positive associations with advertised products categorized the items faster when positive words and the products name Calgon were categorized with the same key compared to when negative words and Calgon are categorized together. This made sense to me because I can see that when we can make associations that allow us to group or associate things in certain aspects we can function on our automated processing. A second aspect that makes a lot of sense is when I consider the emotional aspect of persuasion in advertisements, judgments’, or prejudices can all have linking aspects (http://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/)
An article I read from Rachel’s Musings discusses Timothy Wilson’s book called Strangers to Ourselves and it is stated that judgments’, feelings and occur outside of our awareness for efficiency reasons. One of the best ways to understand this adaptive unconsciousness is through our behavior interpreted through those close to us and for those willing to be honest enough to speak the truth. This article goes on to elaborate about how a person can construct the self or the perception of the self (Rachel’s Musings, 2008) similar to the Ego Defense Mechanisms the book talks about (Wiley, 2009).
I have an interest in finding effective ways for those dealing with domestic abuse to develop realistic self constructs of themselves and for their children. I surfed an APA website for an article on the subject and the one that caught my attention is related to the aspect of an abused individual who does not leave the abuser. In similar ways this article was researching the reason college students do not report violence on campus’s and this study found that trust was a huge issue connected to whether students report violence. This study found that an investigation of students willingness to report threats of violence; which relates to implicit motivation, is self protective if trust in security is not established. When trust is established through supportive, healthy learning communities that specifically address threats of violence, then trust and healthy interpersonal relationships encourages involvement that keeps students safe (Sulkowski, 2011).
This is encouraging to make a connection between implicit motivation and see how similar it is in the situation of domestic violence and the willingness of bystanders to become involved enough to make a difference for positive change.
Sources:
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/
Rachel’ Musings (2008,March 19) Journey to the Adaptive Unconscious. Retrieved April 14, 2011, from http://www.rabe.org/journey-to-the-adaptive-unconscious/
Sulkowski, Michael, L. (2011, April). An investigation of students willingness to report threats of violence on campus. Psychology of Violence, 1 Retrieved April 14, 2011, fromhttp://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/vio/sample.aspx http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/features/vio-1-1-53.pdf

I chose to learn more about Id Ego and Superego.
The first article says id is the only component of personality that is present from birth and is entirely unconscious. Id strives for immediate gratification of all desires, wants, and needs. If these needs are not met immediately id goes into a state of anxiety or tension. Id is the most important in a child's early life because it ensures that a young child's needs are met. As we get older we realize it is not always possible to get what we want. It would be disruptive and socially unacceptable. Since we can no always get what we want id has created a primary process. This is when id forms a mental image of the things they want as a way of satisfying the need.
The ego is the part of personality that deals with reality. It deals with the impulses of id and expresses them in a manner that is acceptable in the real world. Ego works in the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious mind. Ego operates on the reality principle and strives to satisfy the ids desires in realistic and socially acceptable ways. This principle weighs the costs and benefits of an action before deciding to act upon or abandon impulses. The ego also has a secondary process, in which the ego tries to find an object in the real world that matches the mental image created by id's primary process.
Superego holds all of our internalized moral sense of right and wrongs that we acquire from parents and society and evolves around age 5. There are two parts of the superego the ego ideal and the conscience. The ego ideal is the rules and standards for good behavior that were approved by authority figures and the conscience has information about things that are viewed as bad by authority figures. The superego acts to perfect and civilize our behavior. It suppresses all unacceptable urges of the id and makes the ego act upon idealistic standards.
http://psychology.about.com/od/theoriesofpersonality/a/personalityelem.htm

The second article says the id is the source of our impulses, ego negotiates with id and pleases superego and superego keeps us on the straight and narrow.
Desires come from id which is located in the expanses of our mind and is driven by the libido. Id has most of our animal and primitive impulses that demand satisfaction. It can be looked at as the little devil that sits on your shoulder. Without id we would die. Id forces us to seek things out we need to survive.
The ego is Freud's second personality. It mediates between ids demands and reality. Ego negotiates with id in order to get it what it wants without costing it to much in the long run. The ego gets this done by converting, diverting, and transforming the forces of the id into more useful and realistic modes of satisfaction. It attempts to achieve id's satisfaction despite the limits of reality.
Superego judges the performance of ego. Our superego is is usually formed from our parents and parental figures. When we grow up we internalize their standards of right and wrong.
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/understanding-the-id-ego-and-superego-in-psycholog.html

The final article said Freud saw the mind as constantly in conflict with itself and divided the mind into 3 parts. These are not truly structures, but separate aspects and elements of the single structure of the mind. The personification of these elements merely serve as a convenient guide through a complex psychoanalytic theory. The id, ego, and superego function in different levels of consciousness and represent a constant movement of items from one level to another.
http://www.victorianweb.org/science/freud/division.html

I chose to learn more about Id Ego and Superego.
The first article says id is the only component of personality that is present from birth and is entirely unconscious. Id strives for immediate gratification of all desires, wants, and needs. If these needs are not met immediately id goes into a state of anxiety or tension. Id is the most important in a child's early life because it ensures that a young child's needs are met. As we get older we realize it is not always possible to get what we want. It would be disruptive and socially unacceptable. Since we can no always get what we want id has created a primary process. This is when id forms a mental image of the things they want as a way of satisfying the need.
The ego is the part of personality that deals with reality. It deals with the impulses of id and expresses them in a manner that is acceptable in the real world. Ego works in the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious mind. Ego operates on the reality principle and strives to satisfy the ids desires in realistic and socially acceptable ways. This principle weighs the costs and benefits of an action before deciding to act upon or abandon impulses. The ego also has a secondary process, in which the ego tries to find an object in the real world that matches the mental image created by id's primary process.
Superego holds all of our internalized moral sense of right and wrongs that we acquire from parents and society and evolves around age 5. There are two parts of the superego the ego ideal and the conscience. The ego ideal is the rules and standards for good behavior that were approved by authority figures and the conscience has information about things that are viewed as bad by authority figures. The superego acts to perfect and civilize our behavior. It suppresses all unacceptable urges of the id and makes the ego act upon idealistic standards.
http://psychology.about.com/od/theoriesofpersonality/a/personalityelem.htm

The second article says the id is the source of our impulses, ego negotiates with id and pleases superego and superego keeps us on the straight and narrow.
Desires come from id which is located in the expanses of our mind and is driven by the libido. Id has most of our animal and primitive impulses that demand satisfaction. It can be looked at as the little devil that sits on your shoulder. Without id we would die. Id forces us to seek things out we need to survive.
The ego is Freud's second personality. It mediates between ids demands and reality. Ego negotiates with id in order to get it what it wants without costing it to much in the long run. The ego gets this done by converting, diverting, and transforming the forces of the id into more useful and realistic modes of satisfaction. It attempts to achieve id's satisfaction despite the limits of reality.
Superego judges the performance of ego. Our superego is is usually formed from our parents and parental figures. When we grow up we internalize their standards of right and wrong.
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/understanding-the-id-ego-and-superego-in-psycholog.html

The final article said Freud saw the mind as constantly in conflict with itself and divided the mind into 3 parts. These are not truly structures, but separate aspects and elements of the single structure of the mind. The personification of these elements merely serve as a convenient guide through a complex psychoanalytic theory. The id, ego, and superego function in different levels of consciousness and represent a constant movement of items from one level to another.
http://www.victorianweb.org/science/freud/division.html

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