The Psychology of “Mayan Apocalypse” Hysteria

 

By now, most people who have not lived in a social isolation experiment for the last 50 years have heard about the so-called “Mayan Apocalypse,” the idea that, with the completion of the full cycle or “long count” of the Mayan calendar on December 21, 2012, the world will end or be transformed in some kind of catastrophe.

Exactly how the world is supposed to end differs from account to account, as shown by the way the theme has appeared in popular entertainment. The very last episode of the television show The X-Files featured a scene in which it was revealed that December 21, 2012 would be the date of an invasion of Earth by extraterrestrial aliens (see screen shots from “The Truth,” Season 9, Episode 19, broadcast 2002); as it happens, alien invasion is a popular Mayan Apocalypse scenario. 

(The X-Files, "The Truth [Pt. 1]," 3:26 into the episode)

(3:56 into the episode; image reversed for readability)

The 2006 movie 2012 posited that the increased solar flare activity during this“solar maximum” year would boil the Earth’s mantle, provoking mega-scale earthquakes and tsunamis (see poster, left, where a tsunami takes out a Tibetan Buddhist temple, hundreds of miles inland); this is another popular Mayan Apocalypse scenario. Other theories currently popular hold that the Earth will be demolished by a star / planet / comet / asteroid known as “Nibiru” on a very long orbit around the sun; claims about the Nibiru cataclysm are detailed in many YouTube videos.

 

On one level, the most important thing to know about this is that there is absolutely no basis in reality for the belief in the Mayan Apocalypse, including the Nibiru cataclysm. This fact is the subject of a recent post on the United States government’s blog, an extensive FAQ page on the NASA website, a detailed article on the website of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, and, according to an article in The New York Times, a public website of the Russian government. This is the subject of John Michael Greer’s book, Apocalypse Not (see cover; available through the widget above and to the right). The Nibiru cataclysm in particular has been debunked thoroughly in two well-written YouTube videos by “3WME” (available here and here). (UPDATE: NASA has created a video, supposedly for December 22nd, which debunks the Mayan Apocalypse in less than four-and-a-half minutes. Watch it here.)

Put simply: no, the world is not going to end on December 21, 2012, and there is no reason to think that the world will end anytime soon.

However, that is not enough, for a student of psychology.

It is not enough to know that there is no basis in reality for what can only be described as a mild social hysteria regarding the Mayan Apocalypse (a hysteria that apparently has even driven some to suicide, according to the Times). No, as students of psychology, we must ask: Why has this social hysteria occurred? Why is this notion so widespread? What maintains this belief?

As it happens, different theories in personality psychology and cognitive psychology have something to say about the psychological underpinnings of the belief in the Mayan Apocalypse. Below, I give brief descriptions of how some of these theories might approach this issue, roughly in the chronological order of each theory’s emergence. (Note: these explanations are not mutually exclusive! And, yes, I know that I am applying theories of individual personality and cognition to the social realm.)

Freudian Psychoanalytic Psychology

Beginning in his book Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), Sigmund Freud (1856-1939, pictured) posited that humans had a “death drive,” expressed in self- and other-destructive impulses, expressed socially in war. Why this should be so would require a lengthy consideration of Freud’s work (including Beyond the Pleasure Principle, The Ego and the Id [1923], and Civilization and Its Discontents [1930]—all written many years after Freud gave up cocaine in 1896, for those who are wondering). In brief, part of the idea here is that an organism seeks to discharge tension, and death is the ultimate tension-less state.

The applicability to the Mayan Apocalypse is clear. The world in the early 21^st century, especially in the industrialized countries, is heavily overstimulated with electronic media and the weight of hyperconnectedness. In addition, the normal anxieties of life are amplified on a global scale, what with concerns about multiple wars; the potential for terrorist attacks (let alone their nuclear or biological variants); climate change and its consequences (extreme weather, rising ocean levels); pandemic disease. In a very broad-brush way, the end of the world would end the overstimulation, end the anxiety, end the tension: Death, the great simplifier. I see this as a deeply deficient solution, of course. But on a primitive level of the mind, perhaps it seems otherwise; the Mayan Apocalypse would appeal to that primitive level of mind.

Jungian Psychology

Freud’s contemporary and one-time disciple, Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961, pictured), took depth psychology in a very different direction than Freud did. In particular, Jung thought that humans were born with certain fundamental cognitive structures, the archetypes—impossible to apprehend consciously, but appearing in symbolic form in myths, dreams, and legends. One such archetype is the Self, the apex of a person’s fully developed individuality; it is often symbolized by circular objects, such as mandalas, or spherical objects, such as the Sun. Another archetype is the Shadow, which represents the traits one has that are not acceptable to society or to oneself; it is often symbolized by dark and destructive beings or objects. (See Man and His Symbols by Jung and his associates, an accessible—if unfortunately titled—introduction to Jungian personality theory.)

In the language of the archetypes, the Mayan Apocalypse represents a fear, and perhaps a warning. In many ways, the 20^th and early 21^st centuries have shown humankind rather at its worst, in terms of large-scale violence and oppression, environmental damage, and the commodification of human life, that is, the reduction of everything to economic terms. (The recent scandal involving a cover photo in the New York Post—where the photographer apparently declined to save a man’s life in order to photograph that man facing a subway train a moment before it killed him—is an extreme example of this commodification.) The notion of the Earth (in Jungian terms, a spherical symbol of the Self) being destroyed by chaotic forces (in Jungian terms, symbols of the Shadow) is a sort of archetypal nightmare. Having it clothed in the garb of Mayan myth (embodying another Jungian archetype, the Old Man or Woman who bestows wisdom) would make this nightmare all the more powerful.

The Nibiru cataclysm—where some celestial body, the agent of chaos, literally comes out of the ‘Shadow’ of outer space to destroy the Earth—is, if anything, even a neater archetypal nightmare in Jungian terms. Jungian individuation—the process of becoming one’s best possible self, in a sense—involves a “conjunction of the opposites” in which the Shadow becomes reconciled to and incorporated within the Self. In the Mayan Apocalypse, the Shadow demolishes the Self. As a vision of our potential societal future, the Jungian reading of the Mayan Apocalypse obsession poses quite a serious warning. No wonder these matters would be on society’s mind, from Jung’s point of view.

[Note: See what The Jung Page has to say about all this.]

Humanistic Psychology

Humanistic psychology, as embodied in the work of such psychologists as Rollo May (1909-1994, pictured), is concerned with how issues of meaning, freedom, human connectedness, and mortality are worked out in the life of the individual. In humanistic counseling and psychotherapy, dream analysis concerns itself with how these themes expose themselves symbolically in the life of the individual.

From this perspective, one can read society’s obsession with the Mayan Apocalypse as demonstrating a fear that the world of the 21^st century offers little support to the individual when it comes to the weightier matters of life. The decline (especially in Western Europe and some American locations) of traditional religion leaves some people with little sense of the greater meanings of life, yet “doomed to freedom,” in the phrase of Jean-Paul Sartre (an existentialist philosopher, of some note among humanistic/existentialist psychologists). I find it instructive that two recent films—Melancholia (2011) and Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (2012)—explore the meaning of human connectedness in the face of an inescapable Nibiru-type cataclysm. And what better vehicle could one have than the Mayan Apocalypse to force unresolved issues of mortality and life’s ultimate meanings to the very forefront of our thoughts, on a planetary scale?

Cognitive Psychology

There are a couple of ways in which cognitive psychology might be applied to society’s obsession with the Mayan Apocalypse, both of which deal with why people might believe in ideas, like the Mayan Apocalypse, which have such a poor body of supporting evidence.

First, one might consider the matter of systematic, ‘hardwired’ biases in cognition. The study of such biases was pioneered by the psychologists Amos Tversky (1937-1996, pictured left) and Daniel Kahneman (b. 1934, pictured below left), as documented in their seminal 1974 paper, “Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases” (Science, 185, 1124-1131; widely anthologized).

Consider what Tversky and Kahneman labeled the availability heuristic: People consider those things most probable that come to mind most easily. Hollywood has been feeding movies about alien conquest of Earth into the public consciousness since the 1950s; for recent examples, think of Independence Day (1996), War of the Worlds (1953, remade 2005), Battle: Los Angeles (2011), even Battleship (2012)—this could easily become a very long list. Hollywood has also been producing movies about global catastrophes since at least the 1970s; for recent examples, consider The Core (2003), The Day After Tomorrow (2004), 2012 (2006), Sunshine (2007), and Knowing (2009). Two major motion pictures about planet-killer asteroids hit the screens in a single summer (Armageddon and Sudden Impact, both 1998), and in this vein we should remember the aforementioned Melancholia (2011) and Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (2012). Global catastrophe is thus easily imaginable for anyone who has been to the movies. This feeds into the bias of imaginability, one aspect of the availability heuristic: that which is easily imaginable is considered all the more likely.

Second, one might consider the matter of critical thinking itself. In a tradition going back at least as far as Socrates (5^th century bce, see bust), philosophers have emphasized the need for vigorous testing of claims, to explore the solidity of evidence and the soundness of logic—and, of course, psychology as a discipline rose from within philosophy.

However, the literature and media (videos, etc.) that support the idea of the Mayan Apocalypse utterly fail any standards of critical thinking. (This topic would require an extremely long essay in itself.) In the face of this, one has to wonder aloud what research might be constructed to test for critical thinking skills, what programs could be devised to improve them, and what program evaluation research might be applied to those programs. (Students take note: There are many bachelors’ and masters’ and even doctoral theses topics in here, I’m sure, not to mention an entire professional research program for any enterprising psychologist.)

Transpersonal Psychology

Transpersonal psychology was largely founded on the late work of Abraham Maslow (1908-1970, pictured)—earlier a leading light of humanistic psychology—who, near the end of his life, realized that self-actualization was not the true top of the hierarchy of human motivations for which he was famous: actually self-transcendence was. That is, when needs lower on the needs hierarchy are met, people seek to connect up with something greater beyond themselves, be that a Deity or Power, a cause, or the pursuit of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. (See my 2006 paper on Maslow and self-transcendence.)

From a transpersonal perspective, the societal focus on the Mayan Apocalypse reflects a widespread inability to access the transcendent. To put it bluntly, Western civilization is materialistic to a fault. In this context, although people have an inchoate sense of a transcendent reality, without a way to access that reality, they can conceive of it only in terms that are utterly unreachable, even alien, chaotic, even malevolent. And, of course, that is the Mayan Apocalypse: cosmic forces that are literally aimed at Earth and result in its destruction. It is a vision of fear, borne of the spiritually vapid nature of modern Western culture.

Conclusion

Before we can address damage—whether in the disordered function of a patient or client, or in the fears or imbalance of a society—we have to have a way of conceptualizing the problem. A brilliant psychologist and mentor, Douglas H. Heath, once taught me to memorize this saying of Margaret Mead: “A clear understanding of the problem prefigures the lines of its solution.” Perhaps one of the personality theories above will give the reader some insight into how to address our society’s issues, given that those issues are manifest in such a phenomenon as the Mayan Apocalypse hysteria. Although I have emphasized research in the Cognitive Psychology section above, in reality, research may be conducted from within each of these perspectives. I wish student theoriests and researchers well in addressing these issues.

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[The opening image was found on the post “Mayan Apocalypse?” of the blog SiOWfa12: Science in Our World: Certainty and Controversy, the blog for a Fall 2012 course at Penn State University. The post was written by Nicholas H. Oliver; it was unclear to me whether Mr. Oliver authored the image. The remaining images are either in the public domain or are the property of their respective copyright holders.]

Copyright 2012 Mark E. Koltko-Rivera. All Rights Reserved.

Psychological Assessment ... and James Bond

Official trailer for Skyfall (coming Nov. 2012)

     Volumes could be written about the psychology of the fictional character, James Bond. On the one hand, there is his almost superhuman courage (is it thrill-seeking? obliviousness to risk? or just monumental bravery?), his devotion to duty and his loyalty, his capacity for concentration, even his incredible hand-eye coordination. On the other hand, especially pre-Daniel Craig, there seems to be an almost compulsive promiscuity, even perhaps an inability to form lasting close relationships. And, especially in the Daniel Craig era of Bond, we see something of the personal price that someone in his position must pay to function: repeated exposure to trauma.

     However, it is rarely that we see psychology portrayed in a Bond film. Yet portrayed it is, in the new trailer, just out today, for the forthcoming film Skyfall (out in November; see trailer, above). The trailer opens with Daniel Craig as James Bond having an odd conversation with an unidentified man:

Unidentified Man: "Country."
Bond: "England."
Unidentified Man: "Gun."
Bond: "Shot."
Unidentified Man: "Agent."
Bond: "Provocateur." 
Unidentified Man:"Murder."
Bond: "Employment." (Bond smiles slightly.)
Unidentified Man: "Skyfall."
(Bond does not respond. The smile disappears. The audience sees a glimpse of what seems to be a memory: Bond shooting someone?)
Unidentified Man (repeats): "Skyfall."
Bond: "Done."  (Bond gets up and leaves the interview room.)

      What is happening here? The unidentified man is using one of the oldest methods of psychological assessment known to modern psychology, the Word Association method. In this technique, the person administering the assessment--a psychologist or psychoanalyst, for example--says a word; the person being assessed--in this instance, Bond--is supposed to respond with the first word that occurs to him. Analysis of the pattern of responses is thought to give some insight into the personality of the person being assessed.

James Bond and the Word Association Method

     What would we be able to tell about Bond from this assessment? He associates "Country" with "England," fitting for someone with his devotion to duty. He associates "Gun" with "Shot," which is appropriate for someone who has both shot and been shot at many times. (Of course, to date, Bond has always walked away when he's been shot at. His own targets? Not so much.)

     It is typical to begin a session of the Word Association method with fairly neutral, low-risk stimuli, and that's what we see here. Even the word "Gun" is fairly neutral for someone in Bond's line of work.


     However, the person administering the assessment in the trailer then starts to move into edgier territory, perhaps unintentionally. To "Agent," Bond responds with "Provocateur," a response that could be seen as either cheeky or downright pointed, depending on the context. This is because "agent provocateur" is a technical term in the intelligence community; it is a term that would be well known to Bond, an agent of MI6 (which focuses on foreign intelligence, much like the CIA in the U.S.A.). An agent provocateur is placed by an intelligence agency within some group (like a political party). Once accepted as a legitimate member of the group, the agent provocateur incites ("provokes") the group to extreme actions, often of a violent nature. Once such actions are carried out, these actions are used by the authorities in power to justify their own extreme response (such as invasion of a foreign nation, a repressive crackdown on opposition political parties, and so forth). The use of agents provocateur is considered rather "not cricket" (as they might say it in the U.K.), or on the order of "dirty pool" (as we might say it in the U.S.A.). By associating "Agent" with "Provocateur," Bond is saying that he knows his intelligence agency uses tactics of which the public might well disapprove.


     Then Bond gets decidedly cheeky, responding to "Murder" with "Employment." Of course, with his Double-Oh License to Kill, murder is literally part of his job--although someone more concerned with social niceties would hardly say it that way.


     Then we hit "Skyfall." This is likely the code name for an intelligence operation in which Bond was involved--and an operation that did not go entirely well. We see a split-second flashback to Bond, holding a gun, with another man sitting in a chair, a man who is not moving. (Someone Bond had to kill but did not want to? Someone Bond discovered dead, unexpectedly?)

     Bond resists. He does not respond at first. When the unidentified man presses the issue and repeats the word "Skyfall," Bond responds with "Done"--meaning that the assessment is over. As he leaves the room, we get a clear if brief look at his attire: a sort of jumpsuit, with the insignia of the British Crown on the left breast. Not normal attire for an MI6 agent--unless that agent is a patient in a facility for agents undergoing psychological evaluation, perhaps after some operation has gone horribly wrong. (Call me picky, but any operation for which the aftermath is seven or so flag-draped coffins--as we see later in the trailer--cannot be said to have gone entirely well.)

The Value of Word Association

     Now you have seen a version of the Word Association method. As it happens, I have conducted many psychological assessments, including some in which I have administered Word Association. What do I think of its use in the trailer?

     One thing about Word Association: there is no generally accepted standard list of words used in this method. To some extent, that is a strength, in that the person conducting the assessment can tailor the list to the specific client (as is clearly happening in the trailer). On the other hand, the lack of a generally accepted standard list of words means that there are no norms against which to compare a specific individual's responses. (For example, Bond responds to "Gun" with "Shot." How typical is that of the general population? Or of intelligence agents? We have no way to know.)

     Overall, the Word Association method has only heuristic value. That is, the material that emerges in Word Association may suggest some interesting hypotheses and areas where exploration might be fruitful; however, it really does not allow one to establish a diagnosis. (Then again, maybe those folks at MI6 are not interested in establishing a diagnosis so much as they are in prying open a peep-hole into Bond's mind--in which case, heuristic value is all that is required.)

Ethical Issues in Assessment

     Perhaps the most interesting part of this for a psychologist or trainee involves the ethical issues involved. As a matter of professional ethics, at least in the United States, the person for whom the assessment is done is the patient himself or herself; the assessment may be ordered by a helping professional (like a hospital ward psychologist), but the benefit is supposed to accrue to the patient, not the institution. But the trailer shows the head of MI6 (played by Judy Dench) and Mallory, a government official with oversight of MI6 (played by Ralph Fiennes), both observing the assessment from behind a one-way mirror. The implication for me is that the assessment was ordered up by MI6, for their benefit and information, not to assist in Bond's treatment.

     The ethical issues raised for psychologists and other mental health professionals in the employ of military and intelligence services are many. As the world gets to be a more interconnected and complicated place, these are issues that have a greater need to be clarified, for the student and the professional alike--and for the public as well.

(A ding to Yahoo! Movies for thinking that "Provocateur" was a reference to the lingerie company! Thanks to E! Online for the information about Mallory.)

(Copyright 2012 Mark Koltko-Rivera. All Rights Reserved.)

Could Charlie Sheen Be Manic?

In an interview on NBC’s Today Show on Monday, February 28, Charlie Sheen commented on the brouhaha that has resulted in halting the production of his television show, Two and a Half Men, for the rest of the spring TV season. (CBS reports on the interview and shows a clip here.) Given Sheen’s recent history—the drugs, the prostitutes, his vague but apparently anti-Semitic comments about his producer, and his recent claims to have “tiger blood” and “Adonis DNA,” some people are asking: Is it possible that Sheen is actually manic, in a clinical sense? (This question has been addressed, for example, by a number of mental health experts in a news report on the HollywoodLife website, and in a post on Time magazine's website.)

The first possibility that comes to mind is that this is the result of the drugs that Mr. Sheen is alleged to have taken in many accounts in the news media (see below). Certainly Mr. Sheen's behavior is consistent with long-term, high-dose abuse of certain substances, such as cocaine.

However, just as a thought exercise, it is worth pointing out that substance abuse often "hides" mood disorders, especially in men. In particular, a 2006 study (Albanese et al.) found that, in a sample of 295 male patients admitted to a substance abuse program, 85 of them (about 29%) fit the criteria for bipolar disorder. Perhaps more interesting, and disturbing, are the facts about what happened when these 85 patients were assessed upon admission to their substance abuse program: 49% of them had never been previously diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

In plain language, if the 2006 study is typical of the general population, then it looks like (1) between a quarter and a third of substance abuse patients suffer from bipolar disorder, and (2) of those with bipolar disorder before admission to a treatment program, about half had not previously been diagnosed with the bipolar disorder.

So, it is at least plausible to wonder if someone with a widely alleged history of substance abuse suffers from bipolar disorder. The two disorders can co-occur. How plausible is that possibility with Charlie Sheen?

It would be unethical and illegal for me to render a diagnosis on someone I have not met with professionally. However, I have worked with several clients with bipolar disorder in my professional roles at institutions such as the Manhattan Psychiatric Center and Lutheran Medical Center, and I must say that there are elements of Mr. Sheen’s behavior that do raise questions in light of the technical criteria for a manic episode, as noted in the standard manual for psychiatric diagnosis, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Textual Revision (DSM-IV-TR). Consider the following:

• Many individuals with mania show “inflated self-esteem or grandiosity,” according to DSM-IV-TR. Given Sheen’s recent comments about having “tiger blood” and “Adonis DNA,” it would be easy to say in regard to this diagnostic criterion: Check!
• Many individuals with mania show “decreased need for sleep.” On the show Piers Morgan Tonight, Sheen recently stated that “I can function without sleep ... and handfuls of cheap trucker meth.” I would give this diagnostic criterion at least a qualified “check.”
• Many individuals experiencing a manic episode show pressured speech. Look at his recent interviews and see for yourself; they are not hard to find on YouTube. I would give this criterion a “definite maybe.”
• The DSM-IV-TR notes that many individuals with mania show “excessive involvement in pleasurable activities that have a high potential for painful consequences,” for example, “engaging in unrestrained buying sprees, [and] sexual indiscretions.” A news report in late January of this year stated that Sheen “spent more than $500,000 on escorts and drugs in the six months before he checked into rehab” recently. Check!

So, if Charlie Sheen is indeed manic, what would be the take-home message here? Some individuals with mania can be successful for many years—up until their disorder causes consequences that just cannot be ignored by their employers or family members.

If he is indeed manic, Sheen needs help: a strict course of anti-manic medication, accompanied by psychotherapy. The sad thing is, many individuals with mania do not really feel that they have a problem—in their manic episodes, they feel productive, creative, and powerful—and they do not consent to treatment until their families and/or employers make treatment a condition of continuing to occupy their roles in their families or jobs. Someone like Sheen has enough money that no one can really force that kind of choice on him.

My own sense of the situation is that this will not end well.

A tip of the hat to Kathleen Koltko-Rivera for bringing this topic to my attention.

(Readers are welcome to comment on this post, below. Readers are also invited to become “followers” of this blog, through the box in the upper-right-hand corner, to be notified of future posts.)

Copyright 2011 Mark E. Koltko-Rivera. All Rights Reserved.

[The image of Charlie Sheen was taken on March 11, 2009, by Ms. Angela George. It was obtained through Wikipedia, and appears here under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Sharealike agreement.]

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Boy Lacks a Cerebellum—But Doesn’t Need It!

Okay—this just seems impossible. However, this unusual news story illustrates something very important about the human brain (shown in the photo to the left).


A recent news story tells about a boy who rides a bicycle, runs about, and does other sorts of active things that a child of his age would do. This might not seem like much of a news story—until we realize that this boy was born without a part of his brain, specifically the cerebellum. To anyone who knows anything about brain anatomy, it might seem impossible for someone like this boy to have such a normal range of activity.

The cerebellum (highlighted in purple in the photo) is a part of the brain that seems to be involved in several functions, including emotional regulation and language. However, its best-understood function involves the fine tuning of large-scale body movements, including the keeping of balance, coordination, and timing. The cerebellum is involved in activities like walking, running, and, of course, riding a bike. Adults with damage to the cerebellum often show poorly coordinated movements, and do not walk smoothly. And yet the boy mentioned in the news story seems to have no problems with these kinds of activities—even though there is only fluid where the cerebellum should be. What gives?

The article speculates that the boy’s cerebellum was genetically defective, and its tissues were reabsorbed into the body while the boy was still in the womb. Further, the article speculates that the boy’s brain reorganized itself to distribute the processing of activities involving balance and coordination to other parts of his brain, while he was still developing prenatally.

Recent years have seen much research published that sheds light on the plasticity of the brain, that is, the brain’s capacity to reorganize itself and redistribute its functions as needed (for example, because of injury). Brain plasticity is most easily seen in the brains of very young people, and it appears to be the best explanation for what we see here with this young man.

Of course, this raises all sorts of questions. If a young person's brain shows a great deal of plasticity, why do not adult brains? Is there a way to encourage plasticity in adult brains? But if we do, what is the trade-off, the cost in other brain functions? For that matter, what is the trade-off in the brain function of the young man in the news story?

And, who will answer these questions? Brain researchers—perhaps even you.

(Readers are welcome to comment on this blog post, below. In addition, readers may wish to become "followers" of this blog, through the box in the upper-right-hand corner, to be notified of future posts.)
Copyright 2011 Mark E. Koltko-Rivera. All Rights Reserved.

[The image of the human brain (with the cerebellum colored in purple) was produced by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), an agency of the U.S. federal government, and so is in the public domain. It was obtained through Wikipedia.]

A Stroke or Seizure--On Live Television

We are surrounded by artifacts of both high culture and popular culture: literature, music, dance, art, drama, television shows, movies, and so forth—even advertisements. It is easy to think that these artistic productions come like lightning bolts of inspiration from some Mount Olympus of the Cool. However, every once in a while, we receive an abrupt reminder that all of this is the product of processes involving physical neurons and synapses in the brain, that three-pound mystery which governs our behavior.

One such reminder occurred a couple of nights ago at the Grammy Awards, when an on-site television reporter had what seems to have been a stroke or a seizure, right in the middle of her on-air report. The ABC TV report of this event, with footage of the reporter in the middle of her stroke or seizure episode, is available in video clips within this online article.


There are two basic kinds of stroke: those caused by an interruption of blood flow to a portion of the brain caused by some blockage of a blood vessel (ischemic stroke), and those caused by actual rupture of a blood vessel (hemorrhagic stroke). If I had to guess, I would say that the reporter in the clip suffered a transient ischemic attack (TIA), where blood flow to a portion of the brain was only temporarily interrupted. The photo above shows an image of a brain where a hemorrhagic stroke has occurred; the disturbance of the symmetry of the brain is obvious, and the larger “spaces” shown in one side of the brain show where brain tissue has been compressed or has died.

The reporter involved is lucky; if this was indeed a stroke or TIA, it appears to be very localized. She may recover completely, as I hope. Many stroke victims are not so fortunate; strokes can cause loss of any of many different kinds of psychological and physical functions, partial or full paralysis, or death. Even worse news: Strokes are remarkably common. In the Western world, strokes are the second-most common cause of death, ranking just after heart disease, and more prevalent than fatal cancers. This makes it important to understand symptoms of stroke, risk factors for stroke, and how to prevent stroke.

Stroke can occur at any age. (In fact, a report last week noted that there has been a sharp increase in strokes among children, adolescents, and young adults, in recent years.) Because it may occur in any portion of the brain, any sort of sudden change in abilities might indicate a stroke. The most common symptoms include sudden-onset weakness in the facial muscles, inability to control arm movements, and speech abnormalities. (We see the last of these, perhaps, in the news clip.) Think of the acronym FAST: Face, Arm, Speech, and Time (that is, sudden onset). People with symptoms like these should be seen immediately by medical professionals. Headache, otherwise unexplained vomiting, and loss of consciousness are also seen in some strokes.

Risk factors for stroke include smoking (active and passive), heavy alcohol consumption, illicit drug use (especially cocaine, amphetamines, and abuse of OTC cough and cold drugs), diabetes, high blood cholesterol, high blood pressure, an unhealthy diet, and obesity. Of course, some of these factors are interrelated; smoking is associated with high blood pressure, and an unhealthy diet is associated with high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, and obesity.

Research in prevention is in early stages. However, it seems wise to seek prevention of stroke by addressing risk factors. Do not smoke—anything—or be around people who smoke. Do not drink alcohol to excess. Do not use illicit drugs, or abuse OTC drugs. Lower your blood pressure to the normal range by (a) not smoking, (b) eating a healthy diet, and (c) exercise; these latter two will lower cholesterol, and improve obesity, diabetes, and diabetes risk, for many people.

While you're at it, cut out the energy drinks, too: a recent study (reported in a Los Angeles Times article) found that the extra but empty calories increase risk of diabetes; the drinks also seem to cause heart arrythmias in some adolescents, which can only increase the risk of a blood vessel rupture, and thus perhaps a hemorrhagic stroke.

I have worked with stroke patients as a therapist. To put it bluntly, the aftermath of stroke can be a living death in some cases. Stroke prevention is worth your best efforts. It can be done. You can do it.

UPDATE 2/17/2011

The Associated Press reported today that the reporter suffered a migraine, not a stroke. The report quotes a UCLA neurologist who treated the reporter as saying, "A migraine is not just a headache. It's a complicated brain event." No kidding.

(Readers of this blog are welcome to comment in the space below. Readers may also wish to become “followers” of this blog, above, to be informed of future posts.)

Copyright 2011 Mark E. Koltko-Rivera. All Rights Reserved.

[The image is of a CT scan of the brain of a person who experienced an intracerebral and intraventricular hemorrhagic stroke. The image was released into the public domain by its author, Glitzy queen00. It was obtained through Wikipedia.]

Denial of Fraud and Cognitive Dissonance

A Ponzi scheme involves a financial scam in which early investors in a fake investment fund are promised—and often achieve, at first—immense returns on their investments. In reality, the fund’s returns are provided, not by the fund’s actual investment results, but by later investor’s contributions to the fund. (This is also called a pyramid scheme, because the lucky few at the early enrolled top of the pyramid of investors are paid by the many later investors ‘below’ them in the pyramid.) Such schemes can collapse when unforeseen circumstances either cause a shortage of new investors, or investors start pulling their money from the fund, as happened when the financial meltdown of 2008 tripped up the Madoff scam, the largest Ponzi scheme yet revealed. Ponzi schemes are named after Charles Ponzi (pictured, in a 1910 mugshot), whose version of the scheme was the first to become known throughout the United States.

 

The New York Times of Friday, March 12, 2010 ran an article by Floyd Norris, who points out that some financial scheme victims refuse to believe that they have been scammed, even after government authorities have revealed the scheme in all its sordid detail. As Mr. Norris relates, when the U.S. government tried to compensate the victims of the original Ponzi scheme, it ran into a problem with some of the victims:

 

To get the money, the victims had to turn over the notes [i.e., financial certificates] they had received from Ponzi. But many of them refused to do so when the cash was offered in 1931.

 

Those who refused, wrote Donald Dunn …, were “holding onto the belief that Ponzi somehow would yet make good on his promise of 50 percent interest.” …

 

That was probably not the first, and certainly not the last, example of what might be called “buyer’s denial.” It is the belief that somehow a fraud was not what it seemed to be, and that there was still a way to avoid losing the money the victim had foolishly invested.

 

In our day, as Mr. Norris points out, a similar drama is being played out with the victims of another scam. As he describes it, CMKM Diamonds illegally issued bilions of shares of stock that were, in reality, backed up by less than $500 dollars in real assets. Since this stock scam (not a Ponzi scheme) was revealed, a group of victims has banded together to sue for about $4 trillion. However, they are suing officials, not of CMKM, but of the U.S. government, alleging that government agents manipulated CMKM as part of a sting operation that left honest corporate officials and their investors twisting in the wind.

 

The reactions of these CMKM investors and some of the original Ponzi investors are examples, not just of denial, but of cognitive dissonance. Widely known to students of social psychology, cognitive dissonance is a phenomenon in which people are observed to undertake various mental gyrations to reconcile dissonant, ultimately unreconcilable thoughts. For example, a well-to-do person might think that she or he is a good, generous person, and yet refuses to donate money or food to a begging person on the street. How to reconcile the cognitive dissonance? Perceive the beggar as evil, lazy, or otherwise unworthy of help.

 

The scammed investors mentioned in Mr. Norris’ article are faced with a pair of contradictory self-oriented cognitions:

1. “I am a bright, prosperous person who makes good investment decisions.”
2. “I am being told that I’ve been taken in by a scam artist who has robbed me of a ton of money.”

 

Dissonant cognitions indeed! Apparently, for some victims, the response is denial: “I was not scammed at all!” Then, in the 1930s: “Ponzi will deliver.” Today: “It is all really the government’s fault that CMKM failed.” (Indeed, one of the academic experts interviewed for the Norris article describes these cognitive dynamics in terms very much like those of cognitive dissonance.)

 

A cognitive dissonance perspective may help civil officials understand resistant, “in denial” victims of scams. Of course, one research question would be, who do some victims exhibit what Norris calls buyer’s denial, and others do not?

 

Scams like this, on the one hand, are in the domain of microeconomics, investment, finance, and economic forensics. On the other hand, the emergence of cognitive dissonance in the behavior of some scam victims demonstrates a favorite point of mine, discussed in an earlier post: “Everything is Psychology.”

 

Reference

 

Norris, F. (2010, March 12). Dealing with fraud by denial. The New York Times [late edition], pp. B1, B8.

 

Copyright 2010 Mark E. Koltko-Rivera. All Rights Reserved.

 

[The image of Charles Ponzi, above, is in the public domain, and was obtained from Wikipedia.]

"Everything Is Psychology"

Some years ago, I was in a seminar discussion as a student, debating some point with a professor who was visiting our class. I forget the point that I was trying to press, but I shall never forget the professor’s response: with a twinkle in her eye, she said, “But Mark, from that point of view, everything is psychology.”

And so it is.

The environmental crisis? That’s psychology. The attitude that people take towards safeguarding the environment; the attitude that they take towards environmental toxins, waste, and so forth; whether they take a reactive or pro-active stance towards problems and challenges; even whether they separate their trash or not—all of these are psychological issues, and as such are well within the bailiwick of psychology.

The current global financial meltdown? That’s psychology, too. The single-minded focus on profit taken by many mortgage lenders, regardless of any concern about potential consequences; the focus by many borrowers on getting a large home, regardless of the risk; the overall lack of concern with how individual borrower, lender, and investor actions could have enormous societal consequences—all of these are psychological issues.

Natural disasters? That’s psychology, as well, to a large extent. Whether we plan ahead and commit resources to avert potential future disasters; whether we consider ourselves responsible to reach out to those in need—all of this is psychological, too.

Extreme example: how about killer asteroids? Yes, indeed, that’s psychology, too. No, the asteroids are not in our minds. However, what we do about them—whether we are willing to plan for this kind of contingency; the degree of societal resources we are willing to devote to averting a global catastrophe that is unlikely at any given moment, but inevitable in the longest of long runs—that is all psychological.

I am not saying that we live in some kind of dream; I am certainly an advocate of philosophical realism. The physical world (including the interpersonal world) is certainly out there. However, the way that we sense and form perceptions of the physical world; how we interpret it to form the experienced world (which is the ‘real world’ for each of us); and, perhaps most importantly, how we respond to the physical world—all of these are psychological issues. Therefore, all of the issues I have mentioned above have highly significant psychological components.

So What?

My point in making this point explicit is to point out that psychologists have a much greater field of play than they usually claim. If you—the student, the researcher, the scholar, the practitioner—are concerned about some current or potential problem that the world or individuals face, you may wish to consider what the psychological aspects of this problem are. (Even someone’s simply refusing to consider the problem as a problem is a psychological issue.) By researching these problems from a psychological point of view, you may be able to address even seemingly colossal problems. Even killer asteroids.

Of course, what is true of colossal “external problems”—the environmental crisis, killer asteroids—is all the more true of the wide spectrum of social problems that our society faces: prejudice and discrimination, homelessness and poverty, lack of educational and vocational opportunity. These are things that more and more psychologists should be working on.

Maybe even you and I.

Copyright 2010 Mark E. Koltko-Rivera. All Rights Reserved.

[The image was obtained from Wikipedia. The creator of the image released it into the public domain.]