Psychology in Everyday Life: The Psych Files

What do psychologists really think about your dreams - do they have meaning?  In this episode I talk about what psychologists think today about dreams.  You probably know that Freud thought that dreams had a manifest content (the people and things that happened in the dream that you remember) and a latent content (the unconscious meaning of the dream).  Do we still think this?  Also: can you look up in a book or online to find out what your dreams meant?  If you dream about a cat for example - what does this mean?  In this episode I explore these questions with author and psychoanalyst Kerry Malawista.  She and her colleagues discuss this topic in their book, Wearing My Tutu To Analysis.  I'll talk to her and include my own thoughts about whether or not dreams have meaning and whether you should be taking the time to analyze them.

Would you be surprised to learn that B.F. Skinner was a very likable guy and that you may actually be very much in agreement with his ideas?  Many people who study psychology have a negative impression of Skinner.  Well, I'm about to challenge those impressions by presenting a side of Skinner you probably haven't been exposed to.  In these sound bytes you'll hear his ideas about learning to play music, about discovery, having fun and becoming the most that you can be. 

Have you ever gotten to immersed in a book or movie that you actually felt like the character?  Or you felt the character's pain or joy?  Why does this happen?  When does this happen?  What is it about the book or the movie and its characters that draws us in like this?  It's amazing isn't it?  To be so moved like this.  Psychologists have studied this experience and we have some ideas regarding what factors have to be present in order for this to happen.  And would you believe that this understand might help us to combat racism and bullying?  Pretty amazing stuff.  Join me as I explore what psychologists call "experience taking". 

We have some great articles covered in this episode so I hope you find them thought-provoking. We cover four topics, all of which can be relevant to your everyday life.  First, a throwback to a previous episode on how to spend your money; experiences only beat out material possessions if they are spent with others. Social settings beat solitary settings every time.Next, did you know a social networking site you frequent may be your approach to impression management? Yes, I am talking about Facebook. Untagging, deleting, and liking certain pages, the site gives you the ability to boost your first impression and prospective employers are treating your wall like a newer, more honest resume.As a college student there are two things I love: procrastinating and sleeping. Our third article revolves around memory and its relation to sleep. No more all nighters cramming for exams; slow wave sleep is the key to memory recall and academic success, but only in young adults.Lastly, we found how smiling can lower dominance in serious situations. If you’re going to get in a fight you better do it with a frown.

Didn't get the flu this past winter?  Thank a psychologist.  What?  Well, it could be that a psychologist was involved in helping health care professionals to do what they know they need to do (but sometimes don't): wash their hands.  The issue here is persuasion and motivation: how to we get people to do something - and keep doing it?  Health care workers like doctors and nurses can fall prey to the availability heuristic: they can easily remember times when they didn't wash their hands and they didn't get sick so they might develop an "illusion of invulnerability".  How do psychologists get involved to solve this problem?  Listen to this episode and find out.

How would you like to have an argument?  Turns out that learning how to have a good argument might just be the best way to learn to think critically.  In this episode I discuss a neat piece of research in which 7 and 8 year olds are taught how to effectively argue. And they do a darn good job of it as it turns out.  Perhaps this is the way to teach our young people  critical thinking: give them some great books to read - like The Giving Tree - and have them discuss what they think about it.  The key ingredient: making sure that they fully understand the point of view of the other person.  This'll be fun. I promise.  Especially since I've got a couple funny clips from Monty Python's Argument Clinic sketch to help move things along. 

Everyone was horrified to hear that an adolescent, Adam Lanza, walked into an elementary school and killed 20 children and 6 adults as well as killing himself.  Many people have offered their view as to what was wrong with Adam and about what we could have done and should do to prevent these incidents.  In this episode I'll share my concerns over what I think is going wrong with community mental health centers and why they probably would NOT have been able to help Adam, which is the extraordinary focus on productivity - the application of the factory model - to current mental health settings.  I also introduce one approach that might help if more mental health centers adopted it, which is the "Sanctury Model".

Transference and Countertransference are two key concepts in psychoanalysis and they are fascinating.  If you're interested in the therapy side of psychology - particularly psychoanalysis - this is the episode for you.  Kerry Malawista, psychoanalyst and author, along with Anne Adeleman and Catherine Anderson, talks about their new book, "Wearing My Tutu To Analysis".  In this episode we focus on two of the stories in the book, which focus on transference and countertransference.