The Amazing Story of Dr. Katze

Most of you know that psychotherapists need to be approved by a state licensing board in order to ply their wares. In California this means that after graduation from graduate school, a person needs to get three thousand hours of experience as an intern under the supervision of a licensed psychotherapist. They must then pass an exam in order to be licensed to practice.

Most states believe that the licensing of psychotherapists will "safeguard the health, safety and welfare of the citizens" of the state. This is a nice thought but does licensing really work this way? As far as I know, there is no research that has unambiguously found that licensing promises professional competence.

This is not true of all professions. For example, if your physician is what is called "board certified" there is a very good chance that she has passed some difficult requirements to reach this level. Psychologists have to jump through demanding hoops to obtain the level of Psychology Diplomate which is equivalent to a board certification.

Even these diplomas on the wall, however, can be bogus. Earlier this year the Attorney General of Connecticut issued an urgent warning to the public about the sale of bogus medical board certifications. Certification boards keep springing up around the country. For example, the Science-Based Medicine website has identified a "Pseudomedical Pseudoprofessional Organization" called the US Autism & Asperger Association (USAAA). The site identifies this organization as a scam because

USAAA Staff, Board of Directors, and Advisory Board rosters are filled with physicians and other professionals who, for the most part, lack real credentials in biomedical research related to autism. What do they have to recommend them? Overwhelmingly, they are parents of children with autism. I find it hard to muster the contempt that I usually feel for people whose pseudoscientific eruptions contribute to horrible outcomes. Instead I feel an almost futile sense of sorrow.

I remember a time in the 80s and 90s in California when increasing numbers of Master’s level students were being certified to practice psychotherapy. Soon, there were too many psychotherapists for the population and these practitioners had to find other ways to stand out from the crowd. To find ways to have an edge over the consumer’s dollar, many psychotherapists signed up for any therapy du jour class that just happened to be available. Many of these new approaches were based on pseudoscience. With more than five hundred unproven therapies available for psychotherapists, it was easy for these psychotherapists to slip into believing they were receiving training in legitimate therapies. The pull of the dollar got them to overlook the fact that there was no evidence their new therapy technique really worked. They believed in it because it seemed to make some of their clients better. These psychotherapists didn’t understand the power of the Placebo Effect and other reasons why people can get better in spite of the specific therapy.

This sad state of affairs came about because many Master’s level training programs gave short shrift to the science of psychotherapy. In a two year degree program there is often not enough time to educate students on the importance of critical thinking and the underpinnings of science for helping people. Consequently, there is wide variability among training programs so it is possible for a person to be poorly trained and still pass a licensing exam. There are psychotherapists today who are licensed and practicing who don’t think that science has anything to contribute to the field of psychotherapy.

In 1991, I presented a paper at the 99th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association about "psychology, mysticism, superstition and the paranormal" in the field of mental health. One of the examples I gave of bogus offerings to the public by psychologists was a licensed psychologist in the San Francisco Bay Area who was advertising her services as a "Critter Consultant." If you had a problem with your pet you could take your beloved animal to this person and she would use her special supernatural powers to telepathically deal with your pet. My paper was called, Hungry People Who Buy Imaginary Food with Real Money (let me know if you would like a copy and I can send you a PDF version of it).

All of these bogus therapies, offered by equally bogus credentialing boards, became an irritant to a psychologist by the name of Steve K. D. Eichel. Dr. Eichel came up with a creative way to show the public how prevalent phony credentialing had become. He thought it would be interesting to see if his female companion (who had no college degree or any association with the profession of psychotherapy) could get some fancy psychotherapy credentials. He decided to see if "Dr. Katze, Ph.D." could get some bogus credentials.

Dr. Eichel found a website for credentialing lay hypnotists, paid the application fee and waited. Within a couple weeks his companion, Dr. Katze, was a certified lay hypnotist. The reason they decided on starting with this credential is that most lay hypnosis associations agree to accept without question certifications from other, similar organizations for lay hypnosis.

By using these reciprocity agreements, Dr. Katze was on her way to filling up a wall with impressive sounding and fancy looking certificates. By doing nothing more than sending organizations checks she was able to get certificates from the National Guild of Hypnotists, the American Board of Hypnotherapy, and the International Medical & Dental Hypnotherapy Association. She also became a Professional Member of the American Association of Professional Hypnotherapists.

A dream came true with so little work. If it was this easy, they decided to check out the next level called Board Certification. Now, this is serious. Physicians can practice medicine as soon as they are licensed. If they become "board certified" they are saying to the public they have achieved additional expertise in a specialty field like pediatrics or surgery. We psychologists go to the next level by working for Diplomate status which indicates we have reached the top of our profession.

An organization called the American Psychotherapy Association was originally established "to advance the profession of psychotherapy." Dr. Eichel discovered they offered the powerful credential of Diplomate. When Dr. Katze applied for this certification the American Psychotherapy Association requested both a resume and what is called a curriculum vitae (a listing of graduate classes and post-doc experience). After very little effort the computer was fired up and was able to print out some very impressive looking documents to comply with these document requests. The fake documents provided a long list of previous jobs such as having been a consultant for the bogus "Tacayllaermi Friends School" in New Castle, Delaware.

At this high level of certification, it is customary for the licensing body to request copies of corroborating documents. Although this request was fully expected, the association never asked for transcripts for the universities listed or copies of all the certificates listed, or for any copies of state required licenses to practice. This information is basic and required when applying for Diplomate Status. Additionally, after a licensing board reviews these documents, the candidate is then examined by other professionals in a face-to-face context. None of these were ever asked for. The credentialing board never met Dr. Katze.

The check went out and another certificate came in the mail within a couple weeks — and a very impressive certificate it was. Dr. Katze was now a certified Diplomate because she had passed "rigid requirements" for this status. The certificate was accompanied with a letter of congratulations for her achievement. The letter told her she belonged to a "select group of professionals who, by virtue of their extensive training and expertise, have demonstrated their outstanding abilities in regard to their specialty."

It is hard to believe that anyone without any expertise could accumulate these credentials by merely asking and paying for them, but this is what happened. It is even more inconceivable when the applicant is not a human. Yes, Dr. Katze was the name Dr. Eichel gave to his cat. His last application even gave the organization a hint to this effect by imbedding a clue. Look at the name of the Friends School in the third paragraph above this one and read the name of the school backwards. If you are interested in reading Dr. Eichel’s original article you can find it here.

Living In La-La Land

Sit in reverie and watch the changing color

of the waves that break upon

the idle seashore of the mind.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow—

If all humans daydream, why is it seen in such a negative light? Why is something so easy and natural seen as a waste of time? How can something so universal to the average human be considered pathological?

It appears that daydreaming can have real benefits:

• It can make us feel active and energetic by relieving boredom.
• It can be similar to meditation by activating our parasympathetic nervous system.
• It might help us be more aware of who we are.
• It may be a key for researchers in understanding consciousness.
• It can organize our conflicts into meaningful solutions.
• It helps to enhance social skills and relationships.
• It appears to be a wellspring for creativity.

I was trying to daydream, but my mind kept wandering.
—Steven Wright—

One of the first psychologists to scientifically study daydreaming is a retired Yale professor. Dr. Jerome Singer surveyed many different groups of people and found that most people’s daydreams are quite ordinary and not at all unusual. Dr. Singer’s book, The Inner World of Daydreaming, discovered that often daydreaming was a way for the brain to map out goals and doubts. Daydreaming as mental rehearsal can actually help you to be more effective in dealing with what is to come in the days ahead.

I remember years ago working with a woman whose husband was an NFL quarterback playing for a team that had surprisingly made it to the Superbowl. The other team was odds on to win the game easily. However, just the opposite happened. The underdog won the Superbowl game much to everyone’s amazement. Much of the credit went to this quarterback who had the best game of his career. He later told me that he had spent about twenty-four hours prior to the game thinking about nothing but throwing perfect passes. His "perfect" passing, which was not one of his strong points, carried his team to victory.

Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my
accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway
from sunrise till noon, rapt in reverie.
—Henry David Thoreau—

The amount of daydreaming varies a lot from person to person. Some people daydream as seldom as 5 times a day while others might daydream over 175 times a day. One finding of researchers is that people who daydream more than the average person tend to remember more content from their dreams at night.

Creative people also tend to daydream more than the average person. Daydreaming is usually a stream of consciousness that randomly moves from topic to topic. This randomness combined with high frequency is one of the determinants of creativity.

Every child knows how to daydream.
But many, perhaps most,
lose the capacity as they grow up.
—Dov Frohman—

It seems that daydreaming happens more often when we are bored or have no need to focus on the task at hand. How does this information apply to the real world? Some psychologists believe that we might be stifling creativity in our children by over programming their time. One study found that children who watch television at least three hours a day are less imaginative than children who watch only one hour a day. Of course, this study does not tell us which is the chicken and which is the egg.

The increasing use of drugs for children decreases daydreaming. For example, children with ADHD who are taking Ritalin are less creative than ADHD children who are not taking Ritalin. On the other hand, people with severe ADHD may daydream so much that they cannot focus on simple but necessary tasks.

"If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician.
I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music.
I see my life in terms of music.
... I get most joy in life out of music."
—Albert Einstein—

What drives the brain to daydream. It seems that daydreaming and night dreaming have something in common. It is a time when the brain assimilates the millions of data bits it continually receives. It must make sense of this chaotic, rambling information and does so during sleep and daydreaming. As with night dreaming, daydreaming helps the brain to solve problems and connect seemingly unconnected pieces of information. This latter function is what creativity is all about — finding the new by connecting pieces of the old. Various studies have shown that highly creative people from Albert Einstein to Walt Disney spent a lot of time daydreaming.

Active daydreaming can help us overcome personal problems. I had a therapy client who came to me because he had become sexually impotent in his marriage. This was before Viagra so we had to find a non-medical solution to his problem. His job was demanding and also involved a lot of daily driving. We found that during these drives, he spent a lot of time daydreaming about this problem and the negative effect it was having on his marriage. Wondering if changing the focus of his daydreaming would work, I asked him if he would like to spend his mental down time daydreaming about seducing and making love to his wife. His answer was not surprising. After doing this assignment not only faithfully but with gusto, he called me back in two weeks and told me he and his wife were having the best sex of their lives.

Reverie is not a mind vacuum.
It is rather the gift of an hour
which knows the plenitude of the soul.
—Gaston Bachelard—

It appears that there is a place in the brain called the "executive network." This area of the brain acts like a switchboard by combining the activity of different brain structures. This network is more sophisticated in adults than in children because it is not fully formed and operational until the early to mid-twenties. Neuropsychologist Dr. Karen Spangenberg Postal claims that we now know enough about this area of the brain so that parents can actually learn how to increase their children’s academic performance.

You can also use daydreaming to help yourself. Since you may already daydream, on average, about one-third of your waking day, why not use it to your advantage? The first step is to reinterpret the value of daydreaming. Instead of seeing it as a sign of laziness or time-wasting, view it as a way to enhance the quality of your life. Once you have given yourself permission to daydream, you no longer have to feel guilty for doing so. After this, you can anticipate and look forward to times of daydreaming. Some people actually schedule daydreaming times – these times can be as short as a few minutes to as long as you want. One final word. Let yourself get lost in your daydreams so that you are the passenger, not the driver. Some research has found that people who are not aware of the daydreaming content can be more creative than people who actively monitor their daydreams.

Thought is the labor of the intellect,
reverie is its pleasure.
—Victor Hugo—

Happy dreaming.

Have a New Husband by Friday

The title of this book is enough to make any woman (and a few men) grab this book off the shelf and start browsing. Psychologist Kevin Leman has written thirty-two previous books for improving relationships between parents and children and husbands and wives. This latest book’s title follows his book for Moms called Have a New Kid by Friday. The subtitle of this book review tells you that you can "change his attitude, behavior & communication in 5 days."

The information in this book is not new but is presented in an engaging, down-home way as if he were in your living room chatting with you over a cup of coffee. The basis of his advice is what we all know to be the extraordinary differences between men and women. He begins by admitting straight up that men and women are different "species." This information is based on not only his decades of clinical work but the enormous research about brain differences between men and women.

His opening salvo will grab most wives immediately. Your husband can’t find the mustard in the refrigerator even when you tell him where it is. Eventually you "sweep" into the kitchen, open the refrigerator and quickly find the mustard. Dr. Leman then asks the rhetorical question, "Why is it that women always win at the lost and found game anyway?"

Every expert on marriage has emphasized that the secret to a successful marriage is communication. In the early days of marital psychology it was assumed that if a man could listen and talk like a woman everything would be just fine. The problem with earlier pronouncements on what makes a marriage tick is that these solutions were presented as obvious self-truths. Eventually, psychology used its scientific skills to study the matter. The pioneering work of psychologist John Gottman in Washington discovered that the key to better relationships is mutual respect. This seems self-evident but the irony is that communication between men and women can get in the way of respect.

Showing your husband respect is basically the core of Dr. Leman’s book, namely that respect trumps communication. That doesn’t mean communication is not important, it certainly is vital to a dynamic and healthy relationship. It’s just that women and men have such drastically different communication styles. Women need to share what they are feeling and are masters at minute details. When men are the recipient of this communication style, our eyes glaze over in about two minutes. When men begin to tune out, women feel they are not respected but then often turn around and respond in ways that are not respectful to their mates.

Men only want the facts and necessary information so that we can figure out things for ourselves. It’s not that we are aversive to details because we are not. Our details make women’s eyes glaze over. A man can get a woman antsy and looking at the clock in a few minutes as we recite the details of a baseball batter’s statistics or the details of an exotic sports car.

Because the communication of feelings is so important women need many friends to do this with. This seems perfectly natural to women. Consequently, they do not understand why we have fewer friends than they do. My wife is continually puzzled that I have "so few close male friends." For many of us men, our friendships are on a different plane.

Men don’t need to talk to each other every day — or even every week or month. We know our buddies are there for us if we need them and don’t need to constantly validate this fact. We men can have many acquaintances but few if any really close buddies. Dr. Leman echoes the experience of many men when he says, "As a guy, I call myself fortunate to have one really good friend..."

We enjoy activities with our male friends which may or may not include talking. We may talk about our troubles but in a way that is different from the "trouble talk" of women. I’m currently getting hassled by my insurance company about getting a fair reimbursement rate for the claim on my totaled car. When I "share" this with my male friends, the only emotion that presents itself is anger. We guys are good at talking about anger, but not so good at talking about disappointment, hurt, and vulnerability.

Dr. Leman reminds us that "Our brains are different, our body chemicals are different, our emotions are different, and we see life from completely different angles." He briefly reviews the research showing us how female and male brains operate so differently. The one that comes up often in the book is how well women can multitask and on well men can stay focused on the job in front of them. Both of these abilities have their assets and deficits but when they appear in a relationship, they can make a relationship volatile in a flash.

In a way, men are simpleminded so we tend to like to have a "job." We understand a job and we know how to focus on it. We don’t need to talk about it or if we do it is goal oriented about the job at hand. When men are complemented on doing something outstanding, our common reaction is that we "were only doing our job."

One of the most dangerous marital myths, says Dr. Leman, came out of the women’s movement when it insisted that men need to be more like women. Many women in the latter half of the twentieth century insisted that apart from out physical makeup, men and women are basically alike. As we now know the vast amount of evidence simply does not support this idea. Yet, Dr. Leman is an equal opportunity finger pointer by reminding men that if they had truly been doing their job correctly this crusade of emotional equality may never have had to take place.

So, if we are that different how can we ever live together harmoniously? Women are masters at relationships while men are as "dumb as mud." Consequently, females need to train us men in how to make a marriage work. Does this mean the author puts all the blame and responsibility for a healthy relationship on women? Not at all. He says this idea that women are the leaders and trainers is based on the notion that each person in a working group should be put in charge of those duties at which they excel.

This seems like a recipe for failure. After all, if men are so clueless when it comes to female relationships how can they change if these deficits are hard-wired? Dr. Leman cleverly tells women it is only a two-step process: (1) find out how men’s brains work and (2) use this knowledge to get them to perform new tricks. To begin this process, every women needs to know four simple pieces of information:

1. He wants to be a good husband.
2. He wants to please you.
3. But he doesn’t know how to do that.
4. He needs your help.

Later in the book, the author acknowledges that some men do not fit this template. Men who are abusive or men who have severe emotional problems may not be capable of changing. The question then becomes what to do. Not surprisingly, this issue is taken up later on in the book.

The foundation for having a new husband in the blink of an eye is to know and understand what your husband really wants from you. Often we men don’t even know this, so how can we be expected to tell you what we don't know? We don’t have to because the book spells it out in detail. In case you are wondering if I would share this explosive information with you, here it is.

• Men need to be respected
• Men need to be needed
• Men need to be fulfilled.

The rest of the book walks you through each of these concepts by giving many examples of how to use these three principles. A man’s need for respect exists at all levels of society. When I have worked occasionally with teens and young men who have been in trouble with the law, they will often say trouble begins when someone does or says something to make them feel disrespected.

So how do you respect your mate? You do this by accepting a man’s limitations and emphasizing his strengths. We are not good at trying to figure out the important things you are saying to us because you give us too much detail. We need the facts, the headlines. We also get confused when you tell us your troubles because we want to fix it. If you have a problem, our brain immediately goes into fix-it mode so we stop listening. As a woman, you can sense this instantly, so you may try harder to give us more information thereby overloading our brain that is now focused on fixing your problem.

Our strength is we really want to love you but the only way we know how to show this is by doing things for you. Our competitive nature screws this up by thinking that bigger is better. We don’t get it that leaving you a short love note after we head off to work can be more important than blowing several hundred dollars on a dinner at an expensive restaurant.

I cannot do justice to how all of this plays out in the book. You need to get it, read it, study it and use it. None of the skills in the book are beyond the abilities of any women. Women are powerful (as compared to men) in a relationship but they often don’t know how best to use this power.

From personal experience, I can tell women that if you use the suggestions in this book, you will have your man more willing to meet your needs. Because of our emotional blindness, we may not even know we have changed. We will probably think you have made a dramatic turnaround yourself when all you have done is tweak a few knobs and twiddled a few dials in our very simple brain.

What might your result be from following the advice from this book? Perhaps this was best summed in a novel written in 1859. The famous novelist, Mary Anne Evans (better known as George Eliot), wrote a romantic novel called Adam Bede. In Book Six, Chapter 54, Adam and Dina pledge their love for each and seal it with a kiss. George Eliot then comments on the event with a familiar quote that has been used at countless weddings. "What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life — to strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?"

The Rabbit In the Hat

With the exception of people within the magic community, most individuals are unaware of the role magic has planned in the history of the human race. When ancient peoples were confronted with the magic worker they took for granted the explanations about how the event took place. Almost universally, the explanation depended on paranormal or supernatural forces.

Two of the favorite demonstrations by magicians in the Middle Ages included (1) throwing a rope into the air and have it completely suspended by "nothing" and (2) dismembering an animal and then "raising the animal from the dead" by putting all the limbs and parts back together. A Chinese magician in the 14th century went a step further and combined these two effects by having a boy climb a length of leather strap that was apparently hung from the sky until the boy vanished. When the magician called for the boy to return at once, he refused. Angry, the magician climbed the leather strap and vanished. Spectators soon saw the boy’s body parts fall to the ground. The magician came back down and reassembled the parts. When he was finished, he kicked the body and "the boy stood up, complete and erect." All of this was observed and reported publically by an eye-witness.

Magicians have probably existed since the dawn of time. A story called "Bel and the Dragon" was written sometime in the second century B.C. The Persian king, Cyrus the Great, had a buddy named Daniel — who is the same Daniel from the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament. It seems Cyrus (whose god was Bel) was trying to convince Daniel (whose god was the Jewish god) that Bel actually came to the Persian temple at night and ate food left by the faithful. To prove his point he took Daniel to the temple holy chamber, showed him the room, left the food and proceeded to completely seal off the room so nobody could enter in the evening. Being of a more skeptical nature, Daniel, unbeknownst to the king had sprinkled a fine powder on the floor around the food. The next morning when Cyrus and Daniel entered the room, Cyrus said, "Aha! See? All the food is gone. Case closed." Then Daniel softly piped up (after all he was addressing the king) saying, "But, your majesty, look at those footprints on the floor. Let’s follow them from the food and see where they lead." Sure enough, they lead to a cleverly concealed door. When Cyrus had his men force the door open they looked in upon a group of priests feeding their faces with the god’s food. Cyrus was so angry, he killed the priests and tore down the entire temple.

We could go on and on about people through the ages fooling their fellow citizens through trickery. Now, you can imagine that if you could kill and resuscitate a person or make people think a god had eaten an offering, you would have enormous status and power. We have an immense amount of documentation about religious leaders such as priests and shamans using simple trickery — magic tricks — to get people to believe in their supernatural powers. Given the proper circumstances most of us are gullible. Prior to the Scientific Age, it was common knowledge that magicians could only perform their amazing feats through the help of devils and supernatural forces. Because of this belief those who performed these "miracle" were either venerated or feared. The latter group sometimes ended up dead.

Magicians have always used a two-part system for their magic: the Effect and the Method. Audiences only see the Effect and if the magician is really good, they will never know the Method. The test for all magicians, ancient and modern, is to separate the Effect from the Method so convincingly that nobody can figure out the Method. Although there are many ways to do this, one of the most common methods is called misdirection, both mentally and physically.

Experienced magicians also know that the belief system of the audience may determine whether the Method must be simple or complex. For example, modern magicians find it much easier to do the same trick as a pseudo-psychic than as a professional magician. They work much harder to fool their colleagues.

Neuro-scientists have found networks in the brain that are specifically adapted to provide humans with magical explanations for events they cannot explain. For example, a recent experiment was done with intelligent, college-educated people who thought their use of a voodoo doll had caused a study partner to have a headache. They did not know that the study partner faked the headache, so they assumed that something about the voodoo was actually affecting another person.

Magicians have always been a closed, secret society who passed on their secrets from generation to generation. The magician's oath has always insisted that anyone outside the magic fraternity was not to be let in on the secrets. For example, a club in Los Angeles called the Magic Circle is a confidential and exclusive club for magicians to gather. Outsiders may only enter through the sponsorship of a magician member. The society has a Latin motto: Indocilis Privata Loqui. I suppose it could be loosely translated, "keep your mouth shut."

In the 16th century the first magic book was written. Since then, there have been thousands of books written revealing some of the deep secrets employed by magic workers. Even today, anyone can walk into a magic shop and buy any book on magic. You can buy dozens of magic books on the Internet.

Yet, many people today still believe that any procedure they cannot explain must have a supernatural explanation. Religious healers use trickery to get people to think they are working miracles through the power of their god. Even highly intelligent people can be deceived about this. Many years ago, the prankster, Uri Geller, performed his paranormal feats to an audience of scientists at the Stanford Research Institute. He completely convinced all but one of the scientists that he had paranormal powers. The lone wolf was a psychologist and magician who was able to help unmask Mr. Geller’s tricks.

Today, professional magicians seldom claim supernatural powers and openly admit their trickery. Even though they fool people, the audience knows it’s a trick. But, what would happen if the magician convincingly told the audience he or she was performing these feats through the power of a supernatural entity? Several magicians have done this in the last century in order to educate people to the power of suggestion. After presenting themselves as having paranormal abilities and showing people miraculous feats, they then blow their cover and explain they are merely magicians. One such performer told me personally that after he made his presentation and confession, one audience member complained that they didn’t believe him. They suggested the magician was really paranormal and either didn’t want to admit or it or just wasn’t aware of his paranormal abilities. Amazing!

Another example of highly intelligent people being fooled by magicians are scholars who study ancient history and try to explain the role of miracle workers in various cultures. For example, one of the greatest New Testament scholars living today is Professor of New Testament in the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. Professor John Meier has written the definitive book on the historical Jesus. A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus is a massive four-volume work that is seen by his peers as an "extraordinary achievement." In this remarkable work, he must deal with the miracles of Jesus and, as any good scholar would do, he attempts to define a miracle. His definition has three parts, the second of which states that a miracle is "an event that finds no reasonable explanation in human abilities or in other known forces that operate in our world of time and space."

The problem with this definition of a miracle is the fact that only professional magicians are capable of deciding if a miracle "had no reasonable explanation." Unfortunately, nobody every bothers to ask them. It does no good to check with other competent scholars who are not magicians. For example, sociologists study groups of people and their behavior. When they see a shaman, for example, perform a "miracle" they tend to take the experience at face value. This position is understandable because magicians are trained to perform the "impossible."

Problems arise when scholars do not take into account the complexities of the human brain. As was mentioned above, most people are by nature gullible given the right conditions. Humans also have the tendency to ascribe paranormal or supernatural explanations for events they find inconceivable. Our fallible memories also give the advantage to magicians. People who watch stunning magic tricks usually remember exactly what the magician wants them to.

Magicians have a skill they call "patter." As they talk to you during the trick they plant information into your mind that gets you to see and remember things that never happened.

Magicians love to hear people describe what they think they saw as they watched a magician perform. Once this eye-witness declaration is made to others, the phenomena of the urban legend kicks in. Researchers who study urban legends have shown that information received from a source that is perceived as reliable is usually accepted unconditionally. So if a friend tells you that a magician made a card rise from the table into thin air and the friend confirmed no strings were attached to the card, you would be inclined to accept this explanation — even though this is highly likely not what actually took place.

Magical thinking is all around us. Athletes who don’t change their socks before a game believe this behavior helps them play better. Gamblers are notorious for devising little rituals to help them beat the odds. Science has even shown that petitionary prayer only produces results no better than chance. Yet, religious people swear that their prayers for others really work.

Psychologists continually study how our brains deceive us into distorting and manipulating reality. People who are born with a natural knack for magic (similar to having a knack for music, sports, or writing) have been responsible for producing miraculous events for thousands of years. These folks have been intuitive enough about human nature to take advantage of brain deficits a long time before science can explain them.

Knowing that magicians have always had the ability to fool even the most intelligent people must keep us humble in declaring that we have all the facts about incredulous events regardless of what we call them: magic, impossible, or miracle. Any experience of this kind is never fully understandable without the knowledge of the professional magician. That knowledge is securely locked within the fraternity of magicians. The only way anyone can penetrate this inner circle is to take the time and make the effort to become a certified magician. All other attempts to understand anomalous experiences is based on incomplete understanding.

What Good Is Research...

Someone asked me recently what good is scientific research if "scientists are always changing their minds?" This is an honest question and one that many people wonder about. Unfortunately, the question, itself, is imbedded with several misconceptions about science.

When scientists "change their minds" it is not the same as when the rest of us change our minds. We can change our minds for many reasons. Our emotions might override our reason. This is something we learn to do in childhood. Children will often tell their best friend they "hate" them because the other child may have taken a toy without asking and won’t give it back. Our physical sensations can also take control of our intelligence. Maybe someone who would like to go shopping changes their mind because they are having a panic attack about going.

The influence of others can get us to change our minds. It can be from a trusted friend or family member. People in authority can easily get us to change our minds, especially if they speak with a great amount confidence and certainty. Con artists can get us to part with our money even though we don’t want to.

Science tries to avoid all these methods for mind-changing. Science began and still is dependent on only one source for change. Scientists rely on data or information that is reliable and valid. This information is collected in a highly systematic fashion so as to eliminate other sources of error. A simple example would be finding out the outside air temperature. Whatever instrument a scientist would use to measure temperature would need to be reliable and valid. To be reliable, the instrument must be able to accurately record the same temperature each time it is used. If it were an electronic thermometer and were turned off after every reading and then turned on to a different temperature, this would not be a reliable reading.

A valid measurement means that an instrument reads what it is meant to read. If the electronic thermometer was giving the same reading each time it was turned off an then on (reliable) but the results were really reading air pressure, then the thermometer would not be a valid instrument for deciding what the temperature was.

For an idea to be accepted, a scientist must collect data for a long time, sometimes decades. Then she must make sense of the data usually with complicated statistics. The next step is to turn it into a paper for acceptance in a professional journal. This is not an easy task. The papers are accepted or rejected by experts in the same field who read the article before publication and criticize it unrelentingly. Often the readers send it back to the author asking for corrections of mistakes they have found. When the readers are satisfied the paper contains the correct methodology and has come to conclusions warranted by the data, the paper is finally published in what is called a peer-reviewed journal.

When the article is finally published, the media may pick it up if they think the findings might be of interest to the general public. This can cause problems because the published paper is not the end point. Once it is published, the entire scientific community gets to study it, analyze it, and criticize it as they choose. Can you imagine your most cherished ideas going through a process like this?

Next, other scientists in the same field of interest will collect similar data and analyze it from a different perspective to see if they get the same results. If they do, then the scientific community is a bit more convinced the original ideas are acceptable. The end result is always based on the data, not what the scientists think. Until the data speak loud and clear, scientists will disagree on its meaning. Even then, with time, even newer data may come along and modify the earlier conclusions.

The average person would have difficulty with such a process regarding their most heart-felt beliefs. We often identify with our beliefs so much that our beliefs define who we are. For someone to come along and challenge our beliefs often feels as if they are attacking us personally. Imagine what it would be like if really smart strangers were constantly asking you to validate your beliefs and maybe even asking questions you might not even understand? Having a thick skin is a prerequisite for being a scientist.

Okay — let’s take a look at some of the research that psychologists have conducted recently. Growing older seems to have more disadvantages as the years proceed. Are there any advantages? It seems there might be, namely experience. What could experience possible offer seniors when memory seems to be less efficient and reflexes slow down? Let’s pick an occupation where age would seem to have no benefits over youth. How about being an air-traffic controller? This is a job where being alert, having quick reflexes and a good memory would seem to be paramount. Two psychologists at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign decided to look into this question. They compared older and younger ACTs on fairly complicated tasks involved with the job. They also looked at simple mental abilities. What they found was that even though the younger people had an advantage regarding cognitive abilities, the older controllers, because of experience, were able to mentally compensate for mental agility that had declined due to age. It appears the older, more experienced people could do their job just as well at the young 'uns along side of them.

How important are grandparents? Other than spoiling children and being free babysitters, what do they offer to grandchildren? It seems they offer a lot, especially to children who are being raised in single-parent families. There also seems to be an advantage for children in step-family households. A study that looked at 1,315 adolescents found that spending time with a grandparent could offset the negative effects of not living in a nuclear family of origin. Specifically, these adolescents had fewer behavior problems and were more pro-social than teens who were not able to have a grandparent to stay connected with. The researchers suggested that maybe grandparents can offset any negative effects of children struggling with the effects of losing an intact set of parents.

Our DNA is involved in every aspect of our lives. This mechanism that Darwin didn’t know about is being more understood each day. Is it possible that traumatic events can have an effect on our DNA? In other words, can our genetic makeup be effected by what goes on around us? Many lay people think our DNA is like an unchangeable script that determines and drives our behavior. Continued research is showing that this is not so. A study at the University of Montreal looked at the DNA of people who were suicide victims and had also been abused as children. They found these people "exhibited changes in the DNA of the hormonal stress gene NR3CI." These changes had an effect on how the gene operated or how it was "expressed." Similar changes were not seen in a group of people who had not been abused as children or people who had died of natural causes. This is another corroboration of how our DNA can affect us as it is modified by what happens around us and to us.

Sometimes our kids look like one of us. Sometimes they don't. Parents are often at a loss to explain how their kid doesn't even resemble anyone on the family tree. So what, you might say? As I keep reminding you, psychologists love peeking into areas of human behavior that might appear insignificant and trivial. Dutch psychologists wondered if these differences might have any effect on any aspect of family life. We know that some men are overly concerned whether or not a child is really theirs. It seems that fewer women have this concern. When the researchers studied ninety Dutch parents, they found that Dads can indeed be affected by the possibility that they may be raising someone else’s child. It seems that Dads were more emotionally connected with their children if they believed their kids looked like them. Perhaps male brains have evolved this way over time because of a number of issues such as inheritance matters and the continuation of the family line.

"Girls gone wild" is an expression describing the hormonal chase that takes place in college age youth. With nature demanding that babies be made as soon as possible, it is common knowledge that college males are continually prowling for female sexual partners. Enter alcohol. It is an age-old assumption that booze can loosen up the most reluctant female in order to delight a male’s fantasy. How true is this? As with so many psychology studies that explode common myths, research at Loyola University found that college females were way off target in how much they believed their male counterparts expected them to drink. They asked males how much they would like girls who they were dating to drink. Then they asked the girls how much they thought the boys wanted them to drink. The results were surprising. It seems the girls were overestimating how much the boys actually expected. In fact they found out that the majority of the girls overestimated this by as much as fifty percent. This finding was not just a curious case of wrongful second guessing. The researchers also discovered that this inaccuracy can lead to dangerous behavior. The young women who were poorest at estimating how much they were expected to drink were more likely to binge-drink and to experience the associated negative consequences of alcohol.

Impulsiveness is something that many people have experienced. Like all human behavior, the frequency and intensity of this characteristic will vary from person to person. Sometimes, when we see this in young children it can either be cute or drive us to distraction. A study at the Sainte-Justine University Hospital Research Center along with the University of Montreal were interested in the following question: what might be the downside of early impulsiveness as these children age? They studied five-year olds and then went back and looked at their behaviors six years later. They found a relationship between early impulsiveness (inattentiveness, distractibility and hyperactivity) and a higher likelihood of involvement in gambling behaviors. The eleven year olds were more likely to play cards, bingo, or video poker. Although these kids were not throwing money at these games, the researchers saw a tendency in that direction because they were engaging in "gambling-related activities." If this research holds up, then it would be even more important to use psychology tools such as behavior analysis to teach children more control over their impulsive behavior.

What Do Psychologists Do?

Some people, when they think of psychology, think of a counselor talking and listening to someone with problems or feeding a pellet to a rat after it has run a maze correctly or teaching university classes. Others, more rarely, think of that old dinosaur, psychoanalysis. Although these things are part of psychology (the psychoanalysis part is dying a well-deserved death) they are only a very minor part.

Anyone in college knows that psychologists are teachers and researchers in the academic world. Another group of psychologists work in settings like hospitals and mental health clinics. In the latest survey only twenty-nine percent of psychologists were employed in stereotypical jobs such as research, counseling, testing or education. Another twenty-one percent worked in the health care system. Less known are those psychologists who work in other settings such as government, businesses, industry, nonprofit organizations.

Some psychologists work with other psychologists, some work with non-psychological scientists, and a few work independently. Collaboration with other professions helps psychologists contribute to almost every part of our society: politics, military, engineering, computer science, legal, medicine, schools, business and even economics. One psychologist, Daniel Kahneman, even received a Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002.

To give you an idea of the wide range of psychological specialities, here is a partial listing of the kinds of psychologists out there. If you are interested in finding out more about any of these specialities, just click on the link.

Cognitive and perceptual psychologists
Developmental psychologists
Educational psychologists
Engineering psychologists
Evolutionary psychologists
Experimental psychologists
Forensic psychologists
Health psychologists
Industrial/organizational psychologists
Sport psychologists
Neuropsychologists (and Behavioral Neuropsychologist)
Clinical Neuropsychologist
Quantitative and measurement psychologists
Rehabilitation psychologists
Social psychologists

It might seem strange that a psychologist would work with the federal government. However, most people don’t know the US Congress has several psychologists. The first was in 1993 when Ted Strickland from Ohio was elected to the House of Representatives. Today, psychologists are politically active not only at the federal level but also in many state governments.

Psychologists also act as consultants to government agencies. Psychologist Baruch Fischhoff, who is a cognitive psychologist at Carnegie Mellon University, is a consultant for two federal agencies. He is an advisor to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Advisory Committee. In his free time he chairs the Risk Communication Advisory Committee with the Food & Drug Administration. He is committed to using psychology to help government make policies and procedures more useable and efficient. Four years ago he explained to Congress how they could improve their communication with the American public.

You may have heard of Sport Psychology. This relatively new field of psychology began in Germany in 1920 with the founding of a laboratory devoted to sport psychology. Since then sport psychology has developed its own journals and training programs around the world. As you would expect, sport psychologists spend a lot of their time helping coaches and athletes with performance enhancement. They also try to help younger athletes discover ways in which physical activity can improve personal development. Sport psychologists are often former athletes, some of whom participated professionally in their sport. Dr. Roland Carlstedt who used to be a professional tennis player, coach and consultant is now the head of The American Board of Sport Psychology. His goal is to put sport psychology on a more scientific footing by minimizing guesswork and opinions about how to make athletes perform better.

Have you ever heard of a Violent Crime Resource Specialist? This is Dr. Kristen Beyer’s job description. She is a psychologist who works for the FBI conducting research on child abductors who murder and those who are serial murderers. She also is a counselor for the FBI employee-assistance program. Working alongside trained agents, Dr. Beyer helps them with any significant behavioral aspects of a case and can often provide them with valuable input based on her psychological expertise.

Some people will complete a doctoral degree in a specific field and then, instead of practicing their profession, will write about it. Some journalists who comment on legal issues, medical questions, or science problems have Ph.D.’s but really enjoy educating the public about their specialty area. One such person is psychologist, Laura Helmuth, Ph.D. who decided to look at psychology from the outside rather than the inside. She became a science writer specializing in the many areas that psychology touches. She now writes articles from a psychological perspective for the prestigious Science magazine.

Who would have thought a psychologist would be working for Microsoft? Paul ElRif, Ph.D. is one of a several psychologists at Microsoft who call themselves "usability engineers." These psychologists work with software developers to help make software easier to use. Dr. ElRIf does this by collecting information on what end users need and how they behave when using certain software. His data is collected through the use of customer roundtables and focus groups. The human element provided by Dr. ElRif helps the software developers make a product less mysterious and more accessible to those of us who use software (are there any people left who don’t use it?)

What do you suppose a psychologist does for a police department. Police psychology gained prominence years ago with the Los Angeles Police Department. Today there is a department within LAPD called the Behavioral Science Services unit. This department, headed by psychologist Dr. Debra Glasser, not only provides counseling for personnel and their families, but is involved in life and death matters that face law enforcement on a daily basis. Her team of psychologists are present during hostage negotiations, SWAT call-outs and are members of the Critical Incident Response Team. They also engage in ongoing research projects related to law enforcement.

Technology and education seem made for each other. Almost every school has computers. Students take notes on laptops, get class assignments through the Internet, and stay in touch with classmates using their cell phones. Psychology is making contributions in the field of technology and education. Dr. Marita Franzke used to work in the usability lab of U.S. West before they were taken over by Qwest but now is with Pearson Knowledge Technologies. Her research deals with helping people to learn better through the use of computers.

We all know that NASA is about space exploration: spacecraft, robots, rockets and all that high tech stuff. What about the human element? When we watch important space events, we see lots of people sitting behind consoles anxiously awaiting some technical outcome. When it occurs there is a lot of high fives, laughing and breaking out of the bubbly. Psychologist Robert McCann works at the NASA-Ames Research Center but is not one of those people at the console. His expertise in human information processing has allowed him to work on projects such as how pilots can best use a Head-Up Display in a cockpit. These "HUDs" project a picture of the instrument panel onto a glass panel mounted on the inside of the windshield. Consequently, a pilot does not have to look down and away from what is happening outside in order to see and read the aircraft instrumentation. Originally many difficulties had to be worked out because of human perception and how it works. Dr. McCann and his colleagues were able to use the psychology of perception to overcome these problems. Does he like his job? He loves it and believes that "unusual career paths can end up in very rewarding directions!"

So what do psychologists do? The is answer is just about anything that involves humans. Think of something humans do, whether mundane or critical and the likelihood is that a psychologist is lurking close by.

Learned Optimism

The average pencil is seven inches long, with just a half-inch eraser - in case you thought optimism was dead. — Robert Brault



In the last article on Learned Helpless, you found out that psychologist, Martin Seligman, was instrumental in discovering the concept of learned helplessness as a graduate student. He became aware that learned helplessness is the result of a pessimistic view of life. His enquiring mind wondered what could be done about pessimism. Since it can be learned, he assumed it could also be unlearned. Dr. Seligman set out to see if this could be done.

Remember that people learn to be helpless by being taught they have no available options for dealing with unpleasant events. This belief is called a pessimistic explanatory style which means a person continually sees the world and self as bleak and unforgiving. How does a person learn to be pessimistic? It’s like most other things we learn. As infants our brains are in hyper learning mode. We are continually checking out the world around us so see how it works. Young brains strongly learn by imitation. Every person I’ve worked with who is pessimistic can easily identify the pessimistic adults who were in their lives when they were children. Like baby animals watching their parents in order to learn how to survive, human children look to older people for learning about the world.

At this point you may be wondering why optimism is so much better than pessimism. After all, some people reason, this world has a lot of heartache and pessimism is a better match with the world as it really is; pessimism is more realistic. Being optimistic in the face of financial meltdowns, starving children, natural disasters and all the things we read and hear about every day seems to be a fool’s errand. Optimism is best typified by the ostrich with his head in the sand — "if I don’t know about bad things, then I won’t have to feel so bad all the time."

Although many people believe that pessimism is a better way to deal with life, research has shown otherwise. As a scientist, Dr. Seligman did not merely think optimism was a good idea, but he and his colleagues studied optimism scientifically to see if there were really any benefits.

The first step was to show that an optimistic explanatory style could cure depression. This step has been a resounding success. Hundreds of studies have shown that cognitive therapy (CBT) is as good as or better than medication for dealing with depression. Additionally, CBT has no side effects, you can’t overdose on it, there are no costs for refills, there is no time limit for when it stops working. Many studies, but not all, also show the combination of medication and CBT is also a workable solution. My experience is that many of my clients, when they have mastered CBT and have fewer depressive symptoms, have been able to significantly decrease their dependence on medication or have even lived their lives without any medication.

Having an optimistic explanatory style has two overwhelming advantages: Optimists lead a better life and optimism can be learned. What is meant by a better life? Basically it refers to quality of life. As we have mentioned in other articles, there are two kinds of happiness. Optimism leads to the type we call the Big H. It is a type of happiness typified by tranquility and peace of mind. This state of being has enormous benefits. Research on thousands of people have show that people who experience this type of happiness actually live longer. Not surprisingly, relationships are much better than those pessimists have. You probably enjoy the company of someone who is upbeat more than someone who is continually whining and complaining about how bad life is.

Dr. Seligman did an interesting piece of research with Metropolitan Life in 1985. As with most companies, Met Life hired life insurance agents based on their skill and experience. Dr. Seligman persuaded the company to try an experiment by hiring people with less skill but who scored high on a test for optimism. After two years, the results were checked and they were stunning. The people who had been hired based on their optimism score outsold more experience agents who were more pessimistic. The optimists outsold the more experienced pessimists by fifty-seven percent!

The one place where you would think that skill would be more important than optimism is in sports. Dr. Seligman worked with the swim team at the University of California, Berkeley. He found optimistic swimmers overcame negative results by trying harder while swimmers who were less optimistic swam even slower after a poor performance. Other researchers have found similar results in other sports such as soccer, baseball, and basketball. In addition to optimism in individual athletes, optimistic teams tend to outperform teams who are more pessimistically driven.

Optimism appears to have a dramatic effect on health. We need to be careful here because there are so many snake oil salespeople out there insisting that your mind can cure all ills. This connection between the "mind and body" is constantly being exploited to the unsuspecting. Bogus cures are the life blood of infomercials. They are to be found in newspapers, the Internet, and even such trusted sources, sad to say, as Oprah Winfrey (See the Newsweek article).

Even though much of the nonsense about the power of the mind says it is research based, when looked at closely it is usually not. If it is, it is poorly done research but this is something the average person would not be able to discern. How your mind affects your health is a new area of research and is already loaded with exploded land mines. Your "mind" has little effect on your life. Rather, it is how you use it. In other words your type of explanatory style is what affects the rest of your body. This is miles away from so-called "positive thinking."

A study of Harvard University students found that many years after graduation, students who were optimistic when they graduated remained more healthy than their more pessimistic classmates when they were checked twenty and forty years later. Studies on the health of pessimistic people — not surprisingly — found they were generally less healthy, died younger, and had more diseases.

Remember to take this information with caution. It definitely does not mean that if you are not as healthy as others your age that you are more pessimistic. The effects of optimism and pessimism are only one the many qualities that affect your health. The big one is your genes you inherited from your parents and many other environmental factors.

A pessimistic thinking style is what causes and maintains depression. Depression is the result of bad learning and is not the fault of the depressed person. Since pessimism and depression are learned, they can be unlearned and new thinking styles can be learned. The process to teach people how to change their explanatory style is called cognitive behavior therapy (CBT).

We know that CBT is the method of choice for changing from a learned style of pessimism to a new one of optimism. The CBT variation (There are many effective variations — see The Worry Free Life) promoted by Dr. Seligman is called the The ABCDE Method of Learned Optimism. The five steps are as follows:

• A - Define the problem: Adversity
• B - Define the belief system that is interpreting that adversity: Belief
• C - Define the consequences arising from the adversity and the (in)action: Consequences
• D - Argue the core belief and effectively dispute the belief that follow the adversity: Disputation
• E - Use the positive feelings that occur after the negative thoughts have been changed. Energization

Dr. Seligman explains that one of the results of using this five-step approach is to become more persistent because pessimistic people tend to give up more easily. Optimists are continually forging ahead in spite of the most devastating occurrences. For example, optimistic parents continue to find new and better ways for managing their out-of-control children.

These steps also lead to having less stress in one’s life. Surprisingly to some, optimistic people experience less stress than people who identify themselves as "realists." This is because optimists easily overcome minor setbacks and quickly bounce back from major negative events. You can review my article on stress and what to do about it at The Worry Free Life web homepage. At the home page, click on "Downloads" on the left. A new window will open with all the downloads. Click on the fourth one from the top.

You might think that optimists would take more dangerous risks. It is true they are risk takers but the risks are healthy ones — not ones that self sabotage. They see risks as the way of opening up life opportunities and enriching themselves and those around them.

If you are interested in finding out what your explanatory style is, you can take the Learned Optimism Test by clicking here.

Dr. Seligman has written many books. Here are a few that you might be interested in.

• Seligman, M. E. P. (1995). What you can change and what you can’t: The complete guide to successful self-improvement. New York: Ballantine Books.
• Seligman, M. E. P. (1995). The Optimstic Child. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
• Seligman, M. E. P. (1998). Learned optimism: How to change your mind and your life. New York: Free Press.
• Seligman, M. E. P. (2004). Authentic happiness: Using the new positive psychology to realize your potential for lasting fulfillment. New York: Free Press.

Learned Helplessness

Dogs were given a harmless but uncomfortable shock. After several of these they quickly learned ways to avoid any more shocks. A few dogs were put into situations in which they could never do anything to stop the shocks. Eventually, they just stopped trying to avoid the discomfort — even when their situation changed and they were given the opportunity to avoid the shocks. These dogs just sat there while getting shocked even though it would have been easy for them to avoid the discomfort. They had been taught to be helpless. They had learned that nothing they did mattered. They had just given up.

As psychologists began to conduct similar research with humans they found similar results. People who learn to be helpless have an outlook on life that is pessimistic. Optimistic people are convinced they have options and choices in all of life's situations.

So, the concept of Learned Helplessness came into existence in the mid 1960s. Until this time, most psychologists believed one of two concepts: either humans acted the way they did solely because of rewards and punishments or emotional problems were the result of deep, mysterious unresolved conflicts (mostly sexual in nature). By doing carefully designed experiments, psychologists began to recognize the importance of thought processes for determining our behavior.

Several professionals began to discover that helping to change people's thoughts brought about a change in emotions and behavior. Albert Ellis, a New York psychologist, became disillusioned with psychoanalysis and discovered that his clients would get better when he could help them change the way they thought about themselves and the world. Aaron Beck was a psychiatrist who also found that psychoanalysis was not a very helpful treatment for people with problems. Martin Selgiman, a psychologist who was later to become a president of the American Psychologial Association, joined Dr. Beck in the quest for finding out how to find better ways to help people change their destructive thinking.

The researchers had one situation they couldn't explain, however. Namely, not all people who were taught to be helpless in the laboratory actually became helpless. Some people never adopted helplessness as a result of the experiments. As Dr. Seligman pondered this, he recognized that the results depended on the beliefs each research subject brought to the experiments. Those who could be taught to become helpless had a more pessimistic view of life, while those who did not become helpless were more optimistic in their outlook.

This difference in how optimists and pessimists see the world is called "explanatory style." Pessimists explain and understand their lives in three predictable ways. They see misfortune as personal, permanent, and pervasive.

When bad things happen to pessimists they believe they are the cause. This can even happen at an early age. One mother brought her 7-year-old son to me because every time he heard about something bad happening in the world, even on the other side of the planet, he believed that he was somehow at fault. As with many parts of our being, we often learn certain traits at an early age.

Pessimists also believe that troubles will never go away (troubles are permanent). So many of my clients that I see in my private practice don't think their life will ever change. They are skeptical that I can help them and are often in my office because it is their last hope. One of the rewards of my job is to have these folks tell me as they leave one of the early sessions, "Doc, I feel so much better because I finally have hope."

Not only do pessimists believe they are the cause of all their problems or that nothing will ever change, they also believe that tribulations are what life is all about. "My entire life is messed up" is a phrase I hear often. Even though we may talk in therapy about other areas of a person's life that are going well, they still believe that every nook and cranny of their life is futile.

This is the exact opposite of how optimists explain personal misfortune. Optimists will look for causes outside themselves for why life just went off track. They see the causes as external not internal. They also believe that bad things are temporary and the exception to life rather than the rule of life. Finally, optimists don't understand misfortunate as being so pervasive. Although they accept the bad situation, they also are well aware of other areas of their lives that are going well.

Let's look an example. Your house is robbed while you are out for the evening. Both pessimists and optimists would agree this is a very bad situation. However, pessimists would take it personally and blame themselves for not checking the locks or thinking it would not have happened if they had stayed home. The optimist would not shrug off the event in a Pollyanna type of response. Acknowledging the robbery as awful, she would realize that there was probably nothing (reasonably) she could have done differently to have avoided the robbery.

The pessimist would also think the situation was permanent: "Every time I go out for the evening, something always bad happens." or "Now I have to live always thinking about when this will happen to me again." The optimist sees this as a rare event but will probably explore any possibilities for trying to minimize a similar event in the future.

Finally, the pessimist will explain the robbery as a pervasive event: "See, things like this always happen to me." or "This robbery just goes to show you that my entire life is one bad event after the other." The optimist will think about all the things in her life that are still going well. She still has a good job, great friends, money in the bank.

Does all this mean that if you have learned to be a pessimist you have to live the rest of your life this way? Not at all. The opposite of learned helplessness is called learned optimism. This will be the subject of next week's article.

Managing Temper Tantrums 2

The previous two blogs covered some of what we know about temper tantrums and what you can do to help prevent them. Sometimes this is not enough. Children being children they are going to have a tantrum in spite of your best efforts to avoid them. There are a number of ways to handle a temper tantrum.

The first order of business is perhaps the most difficult. When your child begins the tantrum, if you are like most adults, your own stress level will immediately rise. You may lose focus, your body will become tense, your breathing might speed up, your blood pressure might increase. These physical symptoms will make it difficult for you to think clearly and follow through with your chosen strategies. By keeping yourself calm, you will at least not add fuel to the fire. Spend some time thinking about how you can remain calm when the storm hits.

If you raise your voice, argue, threaten or otherwise match your child’s behavior, your child will have the upper hand. Not only will it make your job more difficult but you will inadvertently reinforce the tantrum behavior with your escalated attention.

You may not need to act immediately. If your child is not in danger or if she is not causing a major public disruption, take a few moments to collect yourself, calm down, and decide what to do. After all, you are the adult and smarter than your kid. Some parents do the old standard counting to ten while they slow down their breathing, relax their body and calm their mind.

If your child is not in all-out mode but merely starting the engine, you might try to reverse the process by trying to connect and reassure him. For some parents it helps to stop what they are doing (if possible) and make eye contact at the child’s level. When you have contact, speak in a soft and gentle voice. You may want to say something like, "It looks like you are starting to get excited. Let’s see if you can remember how to calm yourself down." You, of course would use your own words. This assumes that prior to this, you have taught your child how to do this and have had a lot of practice sessions when he was in a good mood. If you can get some good results, then you can spend time "catching him being good."

With small children many parents find that distraction can often help. You know what interests your child and can use these interests when necessary to break the tantrum chain. Since you now know most of the situations in which your child will have a tantrum (from your Tantrum Diary), plan ahead. When you know these situations are coming up, think about what distractions you can use if you should need them.

If used properly, Time Out can be an effective technique for managing a temper tantrum. Unfortunately, it is often used incorrectly so it has gotten a bad name. If you want to use Time Out at home, pick a place that is dull and boring but not scary: laundry rooms, spare bedrooms, whatever you have available — but definitely not the child’s bedroom or a playroom. Children are different in what they find dull and boring so you may have to experiment a bit.

When the child is in a good mood so that you can talk about her behavior, gently explain that from now on when she loses control, you are going to help her calm down by letting her spend some time in the Time Out Room. Show her the room and tell her that if she can stay in there you won’t close the door. But, if she attempts to come out of the room then you will have to keep the door shut. Then explain that how long she stays in there will depend on her.

Tell her when she quiets down, you will set the timer and if she can remain quiet until the timer goes off she can come out. What she won’t know is that you will set the timer for as short a period as you can — like less than a minute. You are doing this because you are helping her to be successful. When she comes out you want to reward her for her "being quiet" behavior. Being quiet in Time Out means she can’t talk to you but she can talk to herself if that helps to quiet her down. If the child is older, you may let her write in her diary about what is happening to her and what she can do to help herself.

One of the reasons Time Out doesn’t work well is that a busy parent ignores her child when he is behaving well. Remember, that some children don’t know how to tell you appropriately they want your attention. They know they can get it by having a tantrum. Because of this you want to continually give your child attention when he doesn’t expect it. The more attention your child gets for behaving well, the better Time Out will work when needed. Time Out is really shorthand for Time Out From Positive Reinforcement. In other words, Time Out is designed to remove the child from attention when he is behaving poorly.

If you are in a public place when your child decides to go into her routine, have your Time Out plan already in place. Most parents immediately leave the store and take their child to the car. When you are in the car, tell her that when she calms down you can set the timer so that both of you can go back into the store. As always when you use the timer, make sure the time is short enough for your child to succeed. You tell her that if she decides not to calm down, then you will be going home immediately.

While you are in the car with her, completely ignore her after you have given her the instructions. When she is calm, tell her you are going to set the timer so that both of you can go back into the store. She will be in the back of the car and you will be in the front. Ignoring your child means you don’t look at her, you don’t make any sounds, you don’t touch — basically you are invisible. As you can tell this whole process can be very inconvenient for you so you. Therefore, you will need to always assume a tantrum will take place so that you can be prepared. Make sure your shopping is set up in a way so that using your plan is possible.

Some parents have used the timer in a dual role. When the child goes into Time Out, they set the timer and if the child can calm down before the timer goes off, then it is reset again for calm behavior. The first setting is long enough for the child to succeed in calming down and the second setting is short enough for the child to succeed by staying calm.

As we mentioned last week, small children can be quite humorous when they are engaging in Attention Getting Behaviors. If you think this is what is going on, ignoring your child is your best response. In case you missed the link to last week’s video of a small child doing his tantrum thing in order to get parental attention. You can see it here.

Holding a child who is out of control is a very controversial technique. Many people have used this to excess. There are many good reasons not to do this. In 2000, there was a tragic case in Colorado where adults attempted to deal with an out of control child by using a "holding" technique. The child died and the four were charged with the child’s death. Most mental health professionals find these "holding techniques" to be dangerous and not helpful. The technique is a part of something called Attachment Therapy. If you are interested in reading articles on the dangers of Attachment Therapy you can check out this link.

With this said, holding a child is best done with young children and its purpose is make the child feel safe and loved. The traditional "holding" techniques do just the opposite — they make the child feel more frightened and insecure. You want to hold your out-of-control child so that he no longer feels afraid and unsafe. While you are holding the child talk softly and reassure him that he can calm himself down. You can restore his confidence in himself by telling him you love him and always be there for him. If you try holding your tantruming child, then continue doing it only if your child responds well. Otherwise do something else instead.

After the Tantrum Has Finished
Some parents like to talk with their child after the child has calmed down. If your child is capable of talking about his feelings, have him do so. You might want to help him come up with a mutual solution for the next time this might happen. Reassure your child there is a better way to get what he wants. You can then take time to teach your child better behaviors for dealing with feelings such as anger or frustration.

When to Get Help
The first clue that you might need to seek professional help is when you notice that in spite of all the new approaches you are using, the tantrums are increasing in frequency or intensity. Contact a psychologist who has a long history in helping parents dealing with behavior problems. At the same time, have your pediatrician give your child a thorough checkup to make sure there are no physical conditions contributing to the tantrums.

Not just any psychologist will do. The psychologist must be trained, if not certified, in Behavior Analysis. Mental health diagnoses are not particularly effective accept in extreme cases such as autism. Even then you will want a Behavior Analyst to help you deal with the behavior.

Behavior Analysis is a relatively new field. The most likely licensed candidates are psychologists, social workers, and school psychologists. Some states are now beginning to honor licensed Behavior Analysts. If you are interested in this new field you can find out more information at the Behavior Analyst Certification Board web site.

Some Things Not to do

• Never, under any circumstances, give in to a tantrum. Giving in will only reward the tantrum and your child will continue to have them and probably have them more often. Giving in does not mean giving ultimatums by drawing a line in the sand. It means giving your child choices and then spelling out the consequences for each choice.
• Never punish the child for having the tantrum. Time Out is not punishment.
• Don't reward your child immediately after she calms down. This is because in order to calm down, she has to have the temper tantrum first. You will be rewarding the pair of behaviors: having a tantrum and then calming down. Reward your child for being calm for a short period of time after the tantrum stops. This is exactly what you will be rewarding your child for when she is not having a tantrum.
• Watch out for grudges. If you are the kind of person who carries a grudge, don’t let your grudge interfere with your relationship to your child. This may be hard but it is vital to successfully carrying out your plan.

Books
Agassi, M. (2000). Hands are not for hitting. (Ages 4-7) Minneapolis: Free Spirit.

Greene, R. W. (1998). The explosive child. New York: Harper Collins.

MacKenzie, R. (2001). Setting limits with your strongwilled child. New York: Prima.

Nelson, J. (1999). Positive time-out and over 50 ways to avoid power struggles in the home and the classroom. New York: Prima.

Websites
Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies
National Association of School Psychologists

Preventing Temper Tantrums 1

This part is a continuation of last week’s blog. I gave you an overview of what tantrums are about. Many parents think that tantrums erupt suddenly and often out of the blue. Child psychologists who have carefully studied children for decades tell us that most children will send you signals that they are at the beginning of a temper tantrum.

Once you discover those tells — or signals — you will find that trying to prevent a tantrum will eventually be easier than trying to deal with it once it has begun. Your first job will be to take the time to find the tantrum signals, sometimes called "triggers." Successful parents keep a Tantrum Diary so they can have a written record what of sets up the tantrum. Even though you may already know this information a Tantrum Diary may still help you discover some not-so-obvious triggers.

Tantrums can be anything in your child’s environment. Time is a very common trigger: bedtime, mealtime, nap time or the end of a fun activity. Another extremely familiar trigger is when you are busy: when you are on the phone, in the presence of another person, shopping, Your child’s non-tantrum behavior can be a precursor to a tantrum: whining, complaining, being sulky or morose.

Very young children throw tantrums when their goals are frustrated, or in more ordinary language, when they "don’t get their way." This can occur when the child is trying to do something new or unfamiliar. Again an instance of where the brain is ahead of the body. Some parents also find that certain times of day can be predictable times for tantrums showing up. This may be due to fatigue, hunger or just some kind of conditioned response.

Sometimes children are more prone to have tantrums when they are away from home: visiting other people, riding in the car. Some children throw a tantrum more often when they are playing by themselves, others do so when playing with their peers.

You can now see that the potential tantrum triggers for children seem almost infinite. Your child will more than likely specialize in certain triggers. The more accurately you can identify these triggers, the better chance you have of warding off the impending blow up. In your Tantrum Diary be sure to note, not only the specific triggers, also their frequency.

So what do you do when you have found all your child’s triggers? Keep doing it because as the child matures, there may be new triggers that suddenly appear. You may never have a complete list so feel free to add new triggers as they become apparent. Once you are ready to manage the triggers you may want to make a Behavior Chart. Many of you are already familiar with using these for your child. Doing this makes the information you are finding more visible and easier to use.

Managing the triggers
Plan ahead – Try to guess how your child is going to behavior as you plan your day. When you have an idea of what you will be doing during the day, you can compare it to the Tantrum Diary. For example, maybe you need to go shopping and course you will bring your child with you. Your Tantrum Diary tells you that your child has a tantrum in the grocery store about 50% of the time. You also found out that it is more likely to happen when your child is tired or hungry.

Knowing this can help you to expect your child to be unruly in the store. What to do? Make sure she is well rested and fed. You also discovered that certain items in the store attract her attention and set off inappropriate behavior. Since children love to be helpers, you will tell your child that you are going to play a game today (smart parents make a "game" of everything they want their child to do). The Grocery Game must be explained in such a way as to make your child interested and eager to play. There are so many way to do this. Being mommy’s helper can be part of the game. Letting her pick out items on the shelves from the grocery cart she will be sitting in can get her interest. Letting her actually take some of the items off the shelves is another option. As you can see, keeping her busy, away from boredom, and always interacting with you (attention) can often bring big rewards for you.

Change the environment
Sometimes the sameness of a place can begin to induce boredom in a child. What a surprise, because this never happens to us adults. If your Tantrum Diary tells you that playing or drawing or any other activity has about a 45 minute limit before a tantrum is inevitable, then you want to change the environment prior to this time limit so that a new stimulation will keep your child’s brain from turning on the tantrum switch.

This is also a good idea when your child shows pre-tantrum behavior such as whining or complaining. In your pre-day planning, have some ideas in mind for what you will do when you need to change the environment. What are examples of new, changed environments? Almost anything your child likes to do — or maybe even something new that she has never done before. You might suggest you both take a walk, ride your bikes, watch a movie, or whatever else "works." By avoiding the potential source of the impending tantrum you may be able to ward it off.

Make sure your child is well rested and fed
As we mentioned above, physical situations can temper tantrums more likely. As adults we can also get grumpy when we are hungry and tired. Fortunately, not too many of us throw a temper tantrum in these situations. Remember, from last week’s blog, that your child may not have developed language or coping skills for these feelings. Your child has learned there is only one way to be expressive when frustrated and perhaps get you to help solve a problem.

Plan for your personal busy times
Most parents know that tantrums often occur when the parent is busy and needs to finish what he or she is working on. Again your Tantrum Diary may show you that your child has tantrums when you are fixing a meal or on the phone or sending email. But it doesn’t happen all the time. The diary will also show that when you can engage your child during these times, the tantrum is less likely. For example, maybe you found out accidently that meal preparation can be easier if your child is with you and allowed to help or even snack and watch. Maybe phone calls will be more calm if your child can sit on your lap or draw a picture for you or your friend on the phone. Find out what works for your child. Ask other parents what they do. I have found that parents can be extremely creative when they put their minds to it.

Make some triggers invisible
Maybe your diary showed you that during an art activity, your child has a tantrum when he can’t use the scissors in the art box because he is not old enough to handle them safely. Maybe other objects in the house like certain papers, your cell phone or some kitchen utensils are also off limits for your child. Hide them so the child cannot see or touch them. Some parents get substitute items such as their child’s own "cell phone" (most people have old ones laying around) or a beat up kitchen utensil. Often your child is merely trying to imitate your behavior and can’t understand why you won’t allow this.

Tell your child what to expect
Your diary might show that visiting new places or spending time with people the child doesn’t know can create anxiety and uncertainty in your child. Children often do best when they feel safe (and well fed and rested — oh, yes, we already noted that). Explain everything to your child ahead of time such as what to expect when some unfamiliar events might take place. Ask your child if he has any questions. If you can anticipate any problems tell him what you can do if he feels upset. Help him feel safe and let him know you will be there for him.

Provide mental, behavioral, and social challenges
Again, boredom is a trigger that makes most humans feel uncomfortable. How many times did you complain to your parents by saying, "I’m bored, there’s nothing to do." Our brains, from birth, are meant to be curious and explore the world. Always be on the lookout for something new that might grab your child’s attention. Then save it for those times when you need to interrupt your child’s boredom triggers.

Signal the end of an activity
It is not a secret that tantrums often occur at the end of an activity your child is enjoying. Give her a 10-minute warning, a 5-minute warning or whatever time intervals seem best with your child. Portable kitchen timers are one of the best tantrum tools parents can have. "When the timer goes off, you only have five minutes to finish coloring." "Now, we’ll set the timer to let you know when you need to put away your crayons and books." "Your time is up. Let’s see if you can get everything put away before the timer goes off again."

Reward good behavior
We could do an entire mini-series on this topic. Attention is one of the most powerful motivators for young children. They are really good at getting our attention when they want it. It makes no difference that the attention you give them is "negative" because for young children, attention is attention. Our kids teach us to pay attention for misbehavior and then we basically leave them alone (ignore them) when they are behaving well. You want to reverse that. Remember the phrase "Catch them being good." In the paragraph above, each time your child is successful (you always manipulate things to increase the probability this will happen) before the timer goes off, you will reward her with hugs and kisses, verbal attention, stars, whatever turns her on. This is especially effective for managing triggers. In the presence of a potential trigger let her earn something important for behaving well. Be sure not to reward her for "not having a temper tantrum." You want to reward her for what she does rather than what she doesn’t do.

Be reasonable
Try to set expectations and demands that match your child’s developmental level. A successful child is a happy child. You also need to know the difference between requests and demands. A request is something ask your child to do but you are okay if she refuses. A demand is something the child must do. Moms tend to be more inclined to ask questions, "Would you like to go and wash your hands now?" Although you mean this as a demand (no choices available) it sounds like a request and will confuse your child because you really meant to say, "It’s time to eat so please go and wash your hands."

Teach control skills
When situations come up where several possibilities are okay with you, give your child choices. Having choices is important to us humans and your child is being more aware of this as she ages. Having control over the little things may help avoid power struggles over bigger things. Often, children engage in temper tantrums because it is the only skill they know. Identify replacement behaviors you want from your child instead of the tantrum behavior. Then teach these behaviors when he is pleasant and you are in a good mood. Practice the new behaviors until he is proficient. Make it fun – a game. Tell him how much more enjoyable this will be for both of you than feeling badly during a tantrum.

Choose your battles
Sometimes we parents are so tired of fighting with our children and having to put up with their tantrums, we begin to draw mental lines in the sand. We start to see all minor indiscretions as places where we need to take a stand as the adult authority figure. This often becomes a no-win situation for you. There will be times when ignoring a temper tantrum is your best choice. Letting your child ride it out will also teach him that not all temper tantrums will engage you. Your Tantrum Diary might give you clues as to when, what, and where you can basically let the performance run its course. Ignoring behavior on your part means you basically make yourself invisible: no sounds, no eye contact, no physical closeness. Some time after the tantrum is finished and your child is behaving well, give him lots of attention (for doing good). Be careful not to do this right after the tantrum is finished because you will then teach your child he can get your attention by having a big tantrum followed quickly by doing something that will please you.

Increase your tolerance level
You, in addition to your child, also need to be rested and stress free. Ever notice how your child’s behavior will often match your well-being? The Tantrum Diary will give you a sense of control. Planning ahead will give you a sense of control. Managing the tantrum triggers effectively will give you a sense of control. Enjoying your child in formerly rotten situations will give you a sense of control. When you feel in control, you will have more tolerance for those small things that used to set you off.

To learn about managing your stress click this link. Then click on the link to the left that says "Downloads." In the window that pops up click on "Stress Management." This will lead you to a complete set of instructions for developing and mastering skills for dealing with stress.

Keep a sense of humor
Finally, learn to laugh at some of the behaviors that used to be so annoying. When some parents laugh at the tantrum it surprises the child and halts the tantrum. Be careful using this, however, because you want to focus on your child’s behavior, not his worth. Many parents will laugh with each other in private or with their friends. This can often make a tantrum more tolerable or manageable in the future. Here is a funny video that was taken of a toddler’s temper tantrum. Read again the importance of attention.

Next week we’ll take a look at what to do if, in spite of all you do, the temper tantrum still happens.

Feel free to leave any comments on your experiences with temper tantrums (not yours, but those of your child’s)