Freud’s Psychopathology of Everyday Life reads a lot like today’s popular science books. In particular it reminds me of Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks, with its conversational style.
Much of the pleasure is the spectacle of all these Viennese doctors revelling in the exciting new theories of psychoanalysis, sharing their little anecdotes. Writing about inadvertent actions and how they can reveal unconscious motives, he quotes another psychologist:
“I entered someone’s home, and gave the lady of the house my right hand. Oddly enough, in the process I untied the bow holding her loose morning dress together. I was not aware of any dishonourable intentions, yet I had performed this unskilful movement with a conjuror’s sleight of hand.”
Archive for the ‘mind’ category…
Chemicals and Complexes
As I wrote in the last post, I’m a tangle of complexes. Why didn’t I know this before? Lately I’ve been examining how my own self-awareness has changed over the years. I suppose you could call this self-awareness-awareness.
For years I would sometimes have bad moods of a particular kind, and during those moods my thoughts would turn to violence. Sometimes while walking in town on my way to or from work I would slip into a self-righteous rage, but lacking a very good reason for it I would fantasize about people offending me more than anyone in fact was doing, and about what I would do to them if this happened (normally involving a beating of some kind, but nothing … read on »
Given the Preponderance of…
For the past few months I’ve had this thing – not an earworm, which is the catchy song that you can’t get out of your head (which I’ve written about before in this blog), but what you might call a language worm. Every so often this phrase pops into my head: “Given the preponderance of…”
I’m not sure why this happens, but it’s not exactly unconscious or subconscious. It’s my mind’s attempt to imitate a man with a pompous and wordy manner of speech, maybe as a kind of self-mockery. So if I find myself being too arrogant or condescending, or if I want to affect those qualities for humour, up it pops into my conscious mind.
But I don’t know how … read on »
Pity the Prawns: Scientists say that Crustaceans Suffer Pain
We are told by numerous reports that crustaceans feel pain. These things crop up every few months, and some of you may know that I’ve written about it before, in Philosophy Now, that time in reaction to Lynne Sneddon’s research into fish. So my ears pricked up yesterday. Here’s a sample of the headlines:
Lobster pain may prick diners’ consciences (New Scientist)
Blow for fans of boiled lobster: crustaceans feel pain, study says (Guardian)
No backbone? Lobsters still feel pain (Times)
Prawns do feel pain, say scientists (Daily Mail)
The study was carried out by a team led by Robert Elwood at Queen’s University, Belfast. They’ve been spending their time “daubing acetic acid on to the antennae of 144 prawns.”
“Immediately, the creatures began grooming and … read on »
Exclusive: Much-Awaited Purchase of Moleskine Sketchbook Awakens Long-Dormant Creative Fervour in Man, Aged 34
Drawn in pen, this elaborate doodle is interesting because while I was drawing it the black was the figure and the white was the ground. So the black was the thing to notice, and the white was just the space in between, the substrate. This was natural, as I was actually drawing the black on a white background. When I finished it (and I was satisfied to find that there was a moment when I realised, without any doubts, that I’d finished, because it was right) there was a figure-ground reversal and since then it’s the white shapes that I’ve noticed, lying on a black background, or in a black space. When I was drawing it I hadn’t realised that, … read on »
My 25-year-old Earworm
Often when I wake up I start singing the song Sing Hosanna! I was reminded of this on Sunday when I heard the song on a comedy show on the radio.
Most of the time I merely mouth it in a whisper as it runs through my head, or else I hum it or whistle it. I said that I start singing when I wake up, but I’m usually already singing it before I become aware of it and before I’m fully awake. It goes back to my days at Sunday School when I was about 10 years old, and it’s been happening on and off since then.
Give me joy in my heart, keep me praising,
Give me joy in my heart, … read on »
Dreaming Spires
(http://www.koelner-dom.de/)
Most people have wondered what their dreams mean, or if they have any meaning at all. It all comes down to the question why do we dream?
I read an article recently that claimed that the purpose of dreams is to reorder our model of the external world, to tidy it up, assimilating and filing our new experiences.
I don’t know if there’s any evidence for this. Dreaming is integral to being human, but does that mean it evolved for a purpose, or to be more accurate, evolved as a distinct adaptation? My feeling – based on nothing much – is that dreaming is a spandrel, a byproduct of adaptation:
…the space between two arches or between an arch and a rectangular enclosure.…a … read on »
©2010 Alistair Robinson