Fearing Freud

“Probably no male human being is spared the terrifying shock of threatened castration at the sight of the female genitals.” — Sigmund Freud

So if men get scared and women have the whole penis-envy thing why is it that we so crave that which we do not have?

We do not wish to have it ourselves, just that it be made available to us by the owner from time to time (or all the time).

Puzzling...

“The prison psychiatrist asked me if I thought sex was dirty. I told him only when it's done right.” - Woody Allen

Bite my somethingorother...

****ing unbelievable. This is fantastic.

A newletter landed in my inbox with links to five tests. I took the one that would tell me what major I should choose, seeing as I can't ever figure out if I'm doing the right thing.

This is what I got:

Psychology

You scored 16 mental chops, 8 work ethic, 15 bullshitability, and 8 practicality!

You don't mind pulling things out of your ass, but you don't want to think and you don't want to work too hard. You also apparently don't want a job. Psychology is perfect for you!

Wonderful! Why don't I just try psychology? Again?!

I did a one year course of psychology last year. I didn't get to start a bachelor degree since I wasn't in the top 4% of my class. A wasted year? Perhaps.

I do, however, resent the fact that this test says I don't want to think. Now THAT is bull shit (which I also seem to have enough of). And why should psychologists not want a job? Only a few of them go all Freud when they're done.

I did NOT like this test.


This one from OKCupid!

Module 31: The Social Psychology of Sustainability

"Most folks queried by Gallup report that, yes, they would like to be rich. Three in four American students entering college - nearly double the 1970 proportion - now consider it "very important" or "essential" that they become "very well off financially". It's not just collegians. Asked by Roper pollsters to identify what makes "the good life," 38 percent of Americans in 1975, and 63 percent in 1996, chose "a lot of money". Money matters.
- It's the old American dream: life, liberty and the purchase of happiness.

Since 1957, the number of Americans who say they are "very happy" has declined slightly from 35 to 32 percent. Meanwhile, the divorce rate has doubled, the teen suicide rate has more than doubled, the violent crime rate has tripled (even after the recent decline), and more people than ever (especially teens and young adults) are depressed.
More than ever, we have big houses and broken homes, high incomes and low morale, secured rights and diminshed civility. We excel at making a living but often fail at making a life. We celebrate our prosperity but yearn for purpose. We cherish our freedom but long for connection. In an age of plenty, we feel spiritual hunger.
- I call this soaring wealth and shrinking spirit "the American paradox.""

From my 'Exploring Social Psychology'
text book by David G. Myers

Module 19: Many Hands Make Diminished Responsibility

How many pickles could a pickle packer pack if pickle packers were only paid for properly packed pickles?


From my 'Exploring Social Psychology'
text book by David G. Myers.

Module 12: Human Nature and Cultural Diversity

1.) Some 100,000 to 200,000 years ago, most anthropologists
believe we humans were all _________________.

A)African
B)Asian
C)European
D)Norwegian


D!!! Go social psychology!


From 'Exploring Social Psychology' by David G. Myers

(it's really A but don't tell anyone)

Module 13: Gender, Genes, and Culture

"Women can be fascinated by a four-hour movie with subtitles wherein the entire plot consists of a man and a woman yearning to have, but never actually having a relationship. Men HATE that. Men can take maybe 45 seconds of yearning, and they want everybody to get naked. Followed by a car chase. A movie called 'Naked People in Car Chases' would do really well among men."
- Dave Barry

From my 'Exploring Social Psychology'
text book by David G. Myers.

Implicit Association Test

I've been reading a bit in my Exploring Social Psychology book by David Myers the past days. After reading each Module, sort of like a short chapter, there are exercises we can do on a cd. I took the Implicit Attitudes Test that may show whether I really feel about things the way I think I feel about them, or whether I, for example, prefer whites to blacks, men to women, while claiming otherwise.

• The first test told me this:
  
  Results: Slight preference for African American
  
  Along with 6% of the more than one million people who have taken this test (this is a real test used for psychological research), I have a slight automatic preference for black people.
  
  If your test results showed a preference for a certain
  group, you may have a hidden, or unconscious, bias
  in favor of that group. The results of more than one
  million tests suggest that most people have unconscious
  biases. For example, nearly two out of three white
  Americans show a moderate or strong bias toward,
  or preference for, whites, as do nearly half of all black
  Americans.

• The second test then told me this:
  
  Results: Moderate association between Male and Career
  
  The same as 15% of the others who took this test. I'm not surprised. A little disappointed maybe, but not surprised.
  
  The gender IAT often reveals an automatic, or
  unconscious, association of female with family and male
  with career. These associations are consistent with
  traditional gender stereotypes that a woman's place is in
  the home rather than the workplace (and vice-versa for men).

So 6% and 15%... I'm not like most people.
Then again, I'm not American.

Wanna see how you do? Understandingprejudice.org
I'd do it if I were you.

We love the professor

Today I spent eight straight hours in a concert hall like thing listening to lectures. Since we can't use your Student Centre anymore, we have to go to Grieghallen, where they've placed chairs in rows in this big hall. Which is where we have our lectures now. It's not very practical.

Six hours into it we were all half asleep. We'd done four hours of social psycholoy and two of cognitive psychology already and the cognition professor was funny but now as funny as before. Or maybe we were just tired.

Then biology-psychology was up. We usually have this dreadfully boring Swedish guy but he wasn't there today. This old man was sitting on the edge of the stage before the lecture started. We all sat down, ready for two more hours. He must have been 75 but his voice sounded like he was 45 and his words made him seem 25 if it hadn't been for the slightly distinguished tone in his voice and some words he used.

We were all cracking up with laughter five minutes into it and more or less laughed throughout the first 45 minutes. He talked about stress and attention and just before the break he said that it's all about staying awake and he had to keep us awake, whether it was to provoke us, make us laugh or whatever else. That way we might remember something and not walk out and want to forget about it. I'm sure there were several of us who nearly fell off our chairs - I don't usually laugh that hard but he had some amazing comments you'd never expect to hear coming from a retired professor.

One of his comments was about this psychologist who lived in Canada and worked at the Université de Montreal. He didn't speak English very well and it didn't really matter because in Montreal they speak French, and if you do speak English you shut up about it.

This psychologist had done some research and realized the word 'stress' was one of few English words that were accepted in French. He then changed the meanings of the words 'stress' and 'strain' so that suddenly people who read his stuff meant something completely different by it than other psychologists - "as you would say in English" (the professor said in Norwegian), "he fucked it up."

We love him! I hope he'll be back sometime.

The last week

The net took a break on Friday and wasn't back up until Tuesday. I hate it when that happens during the weekend, they usually fix it on Monday but this time it took until Tuesday night. But I'm back (can't get rid of me) and I've listed a few things I wanted to comment on.

Helicopters
There's a military training thing going on in the ocean just off the coast. Soldiers from several countries are out there for a couple of weeks before moving further north where they will be joined by more soldiers from other countries. They'll pretend to be 'protecting the peace' in a country called Utopia.

And this weekend I saw a helicopter. Well, it looked more like a small airplane, but it was a helicopter. With four windows like in airplanes, biggest helicopter I've ever seen. People staring up into the sky everywhere. Today there were two more, normal sized though, strange green colour, flying over the city.

Dream 1
I dreamt I was wearing see-through underwear under see-through clothes. Not a good idea. Rather disturbing actually... :)

Dream 2
A dream about something I thought I'd remember but I've forgot.

Singing birds
The birds here are singing at night. We don't usually hear birds singing during the winter, they've all gone south months ago. But now they're singing at 3am. I know this because I'm awake at 3am, which I shouldn't be. But the birds are awake too... I wonder what's going on.

Dragon Mountain
After they've started tearing down the Student Centre where we used to have our lectures, we now go to the concert hall Grieghallen, and we've also had our first lecture at the law school, or the law department of the University. There are 850 of us and they have to split us between two auditoriums to fit us in. Most of us, anyway. The law school is affectionately, and officially, known as the Dragon Mountain. That's what it says in the papers we get from the University, that's what the professors say; "the next lecture is at the Dragon Mountain". Guess that says it all about our future lawyers.

Great professor
I love our Cognition professor! I do, I really do. We've had one lecture Monday afternoon. Entering the auditorium tired after lectures on Methods and Developmental Psychology, we all quickly woke up. The professor is from Switzerland and he's great. He takes a few seconds to get his Norwegian right every time, although we understand him perfectly (most of the time), but when he's the funniest guy you've met in ages, it's really really worth it. And it's not like some of the other professors who seem to struggle to put a joke in there, he just says something or does something and... I don't know, maybe he should be a comedian. He's a natural. Plus he really knows what he's talking about - I went straight home and started reading the book. Can't wait for the next lecture on Cognition.

Attachment
We talked about attachment in Development. Some kids don't get a strong attachment to their parents and can have problems getting attached to people later in life. They can grow up (and into) not needing intimacy or being close to others. As adults they are just like everybody else, they just have problems telling or showing people they care about them, or they just don't need other people. We learnt about a lot of different kinds of children and adults, but I noticed this one. I'm wondering if that's what happened to me. Not that my parents ever did anything wrong, it's not about that, but maybe I just... have that kind of personality.

What if I'll never be able to tell, or show, someone that I care about them? What if I'll never let myself need anyone? How would that work? That's the way it is now, maybe the critical and/or sensitive periods for attachment are long gone and I'm forever destined to... well it's not that I don't care about people, cuz I do. I guess it's just hard to see, and it must seem like I don't really care about anyone. But I do.

Dream 3
I dreamt I was drinking coke. Which is strange because I don't really like coke...

Dream 4
Started dreaming a lot lately... Dreamt a woman was paying for something at a shop and she had 20 øre (3.5 cents) less than what she had to pay (weird since our smallest coin is 50 øre). The person at the till said it didn't matter. Then the woman walked out and I found 20 øre. Suddenly I was that woman and I walked back into the shop and gave them the 20 øre coin I had found.

We Were Soldiers
This was the Sunday night movie last week and I decided to watch it. After having seen Full Metal Jacket a few days earlier, I guess I expected something like it. I liked the first part of FMJ but the second part was... well I can't really say, I've never been anywhere close to a situation like that, but it didn't seem real and the feeling just wasn't there. In We Were Soldiers, however, the feeling was there. Big time. I loved it. I sometimes hope the ending won't be a happy ending when I watch movies because happy endings... life isn't always like that. We want it to be, but it's not reality. That's a horrible thing to say isn't it? Not wanting happy endings? Anyway, I don't know if you've seen it or not, but in the last scene, when the taxi came, I was expecting a letter. And when it wasn't... I think everyone who has seen that movie must have felt the relief I felt. Even if it was just a movie. I hope real life has happy endings.

One down...

I was kinda worried that the crush question was going to show up on the test today. I might just have had to go for A if it had appeared... I'm actually listening to Crush right now, maybe there's something to it?

The exam... well... The multiple choice was fun, 60 questions about anything and everything. Then I wrote a thing on social influences and another on perception. I wrote more than I thought I would on the first, and not very much on the second.

I learnt something about myself today. About myself and being nervous. I've noticed that I'm less nervous when presenting something in fromt of my seminar group or when having a guidance session with a teacher or something. In high school I always used to be really nervous about that (the talking in front of my class) but now it seems to have... worn off? I'm sure it will come back next time, but last time I talked about my paper in philosophy during the work group, showing the others what I'll be doing and stuff, - I wasn't nervous. I didn't think about it then.

But that wasn't what I learnt today.

Today I got up at six, six thirty. I had some cereal but I couldn't eat a thing. My head empty, I usually have too many thoughts up there. After breakfast I walked to the bus, it's about 25 mins there and I've spent ages finding out where the bus was leaving from. I would have had to take another bus to that bus if it had rained but luckily the sky was clear - and it was freezing outside! The bus came almost right away. When I was sitting there I realized that I was just sort of hearing others talk, about the exam, mostly, since there were many of us on that bus. I didn't have a single thought in my head. I didn't daydream, I didn't wonder, I didn't think. Not the slightest bit nervous, just completely calm. That lasted until... until I lined up to hand in my exam five hours later. When I first walked into the room where the exam was going to be, seeing an ocean of desks and chairs, I realized that this is... serious. In a good way. It's no more high school - this is university. It's said that no one makes it on their first try, meaning no one manages to get As on all three exams, which is needed to keep studying psychology.

I'm just wondering... do you stop being 'obviously nervous' as you get older? I know I was nervous in a way, but it was more a totally relaxed state of nervousness. Like my brain was just relaxing as much as it could before it was time to work. I much prefer it this way, I take things just as seriously but without worrying about it. I think and wonder and all that, but no more worries. In the words of Simba from the Lion King:

"Look, sometimes bad things happen, and there is nothing you can do about it, so why worry?"


Alright, psychology exam is over, it's out of the world, it's over and done with! For now.


I got the mp3 player today. Went to get it at the post office, it was wrapped in air in a big brown box, kinda hard to carry when wearing my light blue mittens, and at the same time doing my best to stay on my feet. I should have had my ice skates with me... Proabably wouldn't have gone any better but at least there's supposed to be ice under ice skates. There's not supposed to be slippery ice under your feet when you're walking up a hill.


For some reason this post doesn't feel right. It's weird. Awkward... I think I need to sleep...

Night night

Question 22

Recognizing someone's voice when you hear it on the phone shows that you have a(n) ____ that person.

A) crush on
B) icon of
C) mental representation of
D) elaboration of

Yeah... I didn't know if I should tell you or not, but I think I have a crush on you. I've known for a while but it just seems silly... Whenever I hear your voice I immedeatly recognize it, and I love talking to you... so... I'll go for A.

Nooo! It's gotta be C!

Question 16

Because of censorship codes in the early years of motion pictures, directors could not show sexual activity on screen. Instead, they sometimes used metaphors for sex such as picturing a train going into a tunnel. If such content appeared in a dream, Freud would consider the content symptomatic of ____.

A) problem-solving
B) activation-synthesis
C) the brain's attempt to understand random neural content
D) wish fulfillment

How complicated...

Question 7:

A really jolly old guy just before and during Christmas Eve, Santa Claus becomes psychologically depressed every year during the dreary winter months at the North Pole. This really ticks off Mrs. Claus, who wants to hit the hot beaches of Rio during February. Santa's mood does improve after the winter months. His wife convinces Santa to visit Dr. Jack Frost, who believes that Santa likely suffers from a cyclic condition called ____.

A) REM
B) apnea
C) REM-sleep behavior disorder
D) SAD

Can't say psychology isn't interesting!

Love?

What is the difference between infatuation and being in love? I thought those two were the same, and that love was the thing above the two of them. Maybe in love and love is the same?

I've always thought that the feeling of being in love disappears after a while, and is replaced by love. Maybe it's been infatuation I've meant all along, if in love and love are the same...

What do you think?


The essence of love begins when infatuation ends.
-unknown

Chapter 11: Personality

On a hot summer evening in 1966, a University of Texas student wrote the following letter:

• I don't really understand myself these days. I am supposed to be an average, reasonable, and intelligent young man. However, lately (I can't recall when it started) I have been the victim of many unusual and irrational thoughts. These thoughts constantly recur, and it requires a tremendous mental effort to concentrate on useful and progressive tasks. In March when my parents made a physical break I noticed a great deal of stress. I consulted a Dr. Cochrum at the University Health Center and asked him to recommend someone that I could consult with about some psychiatric disorders I felt I had. I talked with a doctor once for about two hours and tried to convey to him my fears that I felt overcome by overwhelming violent impulses. After one session I never saw the doctor again, and since then I have been fighting my mental turmoil alone, and seemingly to no avail. After my death I wish that an autopsy would be performed on me to see if there is any visible physical disorder. I have had some tremendous headaches in the past and have consumed two large bottles of Excedrin in the past three months. (Lavergne, 1997, p. 8)

Later that night Charles Whitman killed his wife and mother, both of whom were lovingly supportive of him. The next morning he carried a high-powered hunting rifle to the top of a 307-foot tower on the busy University of Texas campus in Austin and opened fire on all those passing by below. Within 90 horrifying minutes he killed 16 people and wounded 30 others before he himself was killed by police.

(Passer and Smith, 2004, p. 419)

My aunt - a doc

Yesterday my aunt called me. She's my mum's youngest sister, and she lives here in Bergen. She invited me to some sort of do because she has just finished her work for her PhD in psychology. In the beginning of December there will be a formal thing where professors and people are going to ask her critical questions concerning her work. Then she will have a dinner for family, friends and people who have helped her.

I won't know anyone there except her and her boyfriend, and my cousin and his wife. Our relatives, my mother's family, don't travel much, they stay up north, close to home. My mum has 5 brother and 4 sisters, and 6 of them still live within an hour of where they were born. Only two boys settled down even further north, and my mum and my aunt went south.

Anyways, my aunt said I might be able to understand what it's all about a little better than many of the others, she's a doctor in psychology now (yay!), and I'm studying the subject myself. High hopes for me here... It's December 3rd, I think, and I'm sure it'll be a lot of fun. She really 'underlined' the part about it being a formal thing on the phone, probably worried I'll show up in my green mini skirt or something.

My aunt has finished her studies (no one really knew she was still studying) and now she's a doctor! I'm proud of her!