A bit of me

It is the weekend once again and plans have been thwarted because of a death.  I shall be with family.  I will be writing about grief eventually, but not today.  I have started writing  my "Memory" notes which I hope some of you will read.  It is ironic that I am writing about memory as it applies to psychology, as I am retrieving my own memory codes to write my second book.  I had always planned to write this one away from the city.  My dream was to write, where I was away at some mysterious cottage near the water with no distractions (except a nearby cafe, by the water).  But, life gets in the way.  Since studying so much these last years and working, I realize that this spring will be my lightest weight since my first retirement.  I am enjoying this period as I take pause.  I should be focused to sell my first book more actively, but I am a novice and I still have another plan for that.  I will find some post box where I can perhaps have people send me some funds and then I can mail it out to them where ever they are.  Maybe I will get lucky.  I am positive.  I wrote that one for fun and the reaction was quite interesting.  Some felt I was telling men what to do, others thought I was great and others hated me.  I don't know why I was surprised.  I wrote it with fun and humour and just looked at it, from my perspective.  We all have our own perspectives and we react accordingly.  I will eventually be posting some short reports on transference and counter-transference.  I studied this, regarding how it pertains to clients, but like everything else that we study or live, we can utilize it across different fields.  So, I should have known better and not have been surprised by the reactions that I received.  I was playing in the form of a book, that took me two months to write and to finally discover how hard it is to publish a book and have an income as a novice.  This second book is different.  I have to retrieve my memory, look at notes and journals and pause.  It is from my soul.  It is, I am discovering, looking at my younger self and wanting to protect her.  This one will sell, I presume because it is about history and growth.  I have gone back in time and as I write, I have become the young woman, that I once was.  I write each morning and then I do all the other things one does in life. 
     I encourage everyone to live one's dreams, as I have lived mine, and continue to do so.  We go through different stages (as you are getting a sense of by my blogs or/and your own knowledge) and we are provided with different roadways.  Which road do you take?  Can you take it?  I remember a psychologist professor, telling us that we may not be able to make a client happy, but we will be able to do is make them less sad and their life more manageable.  Why not take a moment again this weekend to examine your life.  Are you happy?  Why not?  Is there something you can do to change that?    What is it that you can change, that can help you accomplish that?     Are you with people who are making you miserable?  Why are you keeping yourself in that position?  Are you in an abusive relationship?  Do you have an escape plan?  (I will help you with that as well, later).  Remember that balance is important.  You need that time for yourself.  You need to nurture yourself.  Have a nice weekend and do something for fun if you can.     

To what extent can psychology shed light on memory with age?

Memory:  a complex dynamic system of information registration, manipulation, storage and retrieval.  Human memory may be studied from two perspectives:
 Information processing perspective (IP) and biological perspective (BP)

IP - studies mental operations involved in remembering.  Mental Operations are functions involved between the perception of information and its use.  IP studies the changes that take place  within and across individuals with age in IP activities.


external events > sensory memory  - as pay more attention encoding > short term memory > encoding.

Reasons for forgetting 1.  Encoding failure leads to forgetting.  2.  Retrieval failure leads to forgetting. 3.  Repression - Long Term - not conscience;  Short Term - conscious/ working memory.

> Long term memory (same reasons for forgetting apply).

Assumptions of IP approach:  Humans are active--they seek and manipulate information.  Humans can work with a limited amount of information on the conscious level.  Humans transform information into storageable units to be retrieved later.

Processes in IP application  1.  Encoding involves labelling information or attaching a code to it so it can be filed and retrieved, eg. names of relatives, friends, places I have visited et.....Encoding involves arranging information; creating mental associations.  Older adults can through instruction improve encoding skills.

2. Storage -  Place material into a file.  However, material may decay and need to be reconstructed on the basis of memory traces of the experience to be remembered.

There are three types of Memory Storage.  Sensory memory involves registration of sights, sounds, smells and is a temporary memory.  Echoic memory exists for sounds and iconic memory for sights.  This memory declines little with age.  Sperling in the 1960's showed that one's sensory memory for visual stimuli is a complete record of the stimulus and with proper cuing one can recall several items immediately after the initial presentation of the stimulus.

to be continued .........    

Mental Health, cont..psychology notes-b. Behavioral Models and c.

Behavioral Models:  Here the individual has an active role in relation to managing environmental demands. Coping involves learned adaptations.  Successful adaptations lead to stress-reduction and the strategies used become part of the behavioral repertoire for coping with stress.  If escape, avoidance or active coping with a stressor is not successful, the individual may learn to endure the stressor and adapt through learned helplessness.

c.  Coping Style Models:

    Fairly stable styles that emphasize thoughts and attitudes as variables in coping - Coping here is a form of problem solving.  For example Valliant (1970's) identified four kinds of adaptive mechanisms or characteristic ways of coping -  mature, neurotic, immature and psychotic. 
     Those who used mature mechanisms were healthier and happier.  For Lazarus coping is struggle not success, managment not mastery.

Cognitive- Appraisal Model:  Coping occurs in situations that a person perceives as taxing and requiring effort.  People choose a strategy depending on their cognitive appraisal of the situation.  Because the situation is constantly changing, coping is a dynamic process.  Choosing the most appropriate strategy requires constant re-apprisal of the situation.

Note two modes of coping
1.  Emotion focused is directed toward feeling better - managing emotional responses.
2.  Problem focused is directed toward eliminating, managing or improving a stressful condition. 

With God In Russia (book review)

 With God in Russia by Walter J. Ciszek, S.J.     Silva Redigonda

     With God in Russia is about a young Jesuit priest who suffers twenty-three years in Soviet prisons and Siberian Labor Camps under suspicion of being a spy for the Vatican. It portrays a loss of innocence from sufferings endured and seen.  But more importantly it tells a journey of his relationship with God who helped him throughout this ordeal of pain.

     Father Ciszek's story begins in 1939. His journey is taking place at a time when millions died, a Great War was fought, the hydrogen bomb was invented, and four Popes reigned, which covers much of the 19^th century.  The author restricts opinions but rather allows the reader to form them.  The author manages to provoke thought and incorporates much of the images of the 19^th century political and religious arena.  Pieces of information is received from the author and transcended to the reader to allow reflection for the time period between his life in confinement and the outside world.

          The central idea is how cruel people can be to each other.  This is manifested by how suspicious people can become of the Catholic Church.  The most important theme is how God is with us everywhere making life bearable when it isn't. It shows humanity at its worse and at its best.  Cruelty is demonstrated by beatings, torturing, and killings occurring within the camps and among the prisoners themselves.  The reader travels along with Father Ciszek and feels the escalation of his hunger, his pain, and the omissions of the basics of human needs such as water and food. Soap is a luxury. It shows humanity at its best by the kindness still evident by some to help others at the risk of their own safety.  It shows God's guiding hand in helping Father Ciszek to serve mass; listen to confession when possible and keeping him alive.  The author successfully portrays the hypocrisy of communism by the contrast of power.  It illustrates beatings of Father Ciszek, as he insists that he is not a spy.  It depicts how a priest must be silent of who he is when religion is considered an evil. Father Ciszek is very convincing in portraying his life objectively.  There is goodness in those imprisoned for murder, within the guards and within the medical profession.  Father Ciszek permits us to see as he sees humanity, the balance of goodness and evil, the misinterpretations that occur as being suspect of the religious, even among good men.              

   There are two metaphors in the biography, which brings everything together politically, and display a balance of good/evil in humanity.  The first is the image of a Pope shaking hands with a Russian leader at the same time that priests and nuns are imprisoned and treated poorly.  The second, which is also the climax of the story, is portrayed when Father Ciszek is walking along with other prisoners, after Stalin's death where they are being transferred to be shortly released from confinement. Father Ciszek observes a mother bird tending to her young chicks and the father bird is watching over the nest.  This image relaxes the priest and fills him with a joy he hasn't experienced for so long.  He reflects on his own relationship with his own father.  Entranced he marvels to a fellow prisoner.  The prisoner grabs a stone and throws it at the mother bird, killing her. The prisoner is quite pleased with his aim, oblivious to the end of life he has caused. Father Ciszek demonstrates his first and only display of anger and disgust. "… I began to shake all over, completely beside myself with rage.  I shouted and raved at him almost irrationally until, stunned; he turned on his heel and walked away.  I spat on the ground behind him in anger.  That night I fell into a mood of depression that lasted for more than two days."  After enduring so much, his moment of joy is destroyed.  It all comes together, the senselessness of it all.

     This book is highly recommended.  Once one begins to read it and become part of Father Ciszek's life, it is difficult to put the book down.  One becomes completely immersed.  This is a book for everyone because it teaches life.  It shows good and bad of everyone.  Even though Father Ciszek suffered greatly, he also depicts the good in Russia, in the people.  By the time you have finished reading Father's Ciszek's book you have fallen in love with him.                           

Mental Health cont....Models of Coping - environmental approaches (notes-psychology).

Examine Life Events, their frequency, complexity, and demands for coping.  Holmes and Rahe (1960's) serial readjustment rating scale.  This scale ranks life events in terms of seriousness or severity.  Each life event is a stressor that demands some adjustment or adaption to many life events in too short a period of time, is correlated with potential for illness of a physical and/or psychological nature.  Thus, the more major changes one faces, the more likely one may become ill.  Humans are seen as reactors.  This approach does not consider people as actors and interpreters of events.  Nor does it consider the timing of events as important.  Nor the lack of sufficient challenge (boredom) as stressful.  Further, health may depend on mastering on-going irritations.  Finally, this model ignores individual differences in stress resistance or diathesis (vulnerability).  

Congruence Model -  This model recognizes that people's needs differ and so do the environments that meet those needs when person and environment are congruent, eg.  An independent person in an environment that requires self sufficiency.  Such a match reduces stress.  Where as a dependant person in such an environment is incongruent or "mismatched" and this leads to stress.

Environmental pressure -  environments make different demands or pressure.  Further, individuals have different competencies or abilities to meet these pressures or demands.  When the person and environment are matched than adaption takes place and the person is comfortable.  Thus, as people age, if their competencies decrease but the pressure of the environment remains the same or becomes more demanding, this may lead to an inability to meet demands and a failure at adaption occurs followed by stress.  Thus, a person must change to meet the demand or the demand must change to be fitted to the person's competencies.

cont......(with Behavioral models)

Mental Health (notes, psychology, personality cont..

Definition of mental health -  Living a meaningful life in a particular set of physical and social circumstances utilizing personal and social resources. 

Mental Disorder (The consequence of living less than a meaningful life) may be defined as personal qualities that interfere with normal cognitive functioning and social roles.  Most common disorders are clinical - depression, substance dependence and anxiety disorders such as phobias.

A.  Social Variables associated with mental disorders - poverty, low-income urban dwellers, men in regards to substance abuse and anti social behavior, women in regards to depression and anxiety disorders. Younger adults are subject to emotional problems and older adults to impaired cognitive functioning.

Models of Coping:  Adaptive thinking and behavior that reduces, relieves stress that arise from demands, pressures, harmful or threatening conditions.  There are four models or approaches to the study of coping.
a.  environmental
b.  behavior
c.  coping styles and cognitive appraisal models.

Each model provides a way of understanding  the relation between the individual and the demands that environmental events place upon the individual  for adaption.

to be continued (a, b and c will be broken down for you)

Problems with Stage Models - Personality -Psychology notes cont......

a.  based on male development.
b.  Cohorts with different experiences; may develop differently.
c.  models have not been tested in other countries.  For example: in studies of male development in India, the emphasis is on spiritual development which is never fully achieved.  Each of the four stages are a preparation for the next stage.  First,  is an obedient student.  Second, a householder.  Third, a retreat from family and civic duties in a quest for self and finally, the fourth stage of a wandering holy beggar casting off all that identifies him.  He enters a stage of harmony with all that is around him.