Category: Other People

There’s a video interview with Nobel prize winning mathematician John Nash, the subject of the Oscar-winning film A Beautiful Mind, over at 3QuarksDaily where he talks about his life, work and mental illness.

The film is a quite heavily fictionalised account of Nash’s life and he clearly has some disagreements with Sylvia Nasar’s award winning biography of the same name, so it’s interesting to get his own perspective.

Nash rarely gives interviews so this 20 minute discussion is quite comprehensive. In parts he discusses how he managed his work as a mathematician throughout his difficulties and even touches on some of his past delusions.

It’s fascinating, if not a little awkward in places, but a rare opportunity to hear Nash in person.

Link to video interview on 3QuarksDaily.

The Providentia psychology blog has an excellent post about old-time champion boxer ‘The Michigan Wildcat’ Wolgast who fought on despite clear neurological damage and eventually suffered boxer’s dementia. He could apparently be found shadow boxing invisible opponents in the sanatorium.

Wolgast won the world lightweight title in 1912 but sustained continuous damage throughout his career and continued way past the point that would be permitted in modern times.

He progressed from minor neurological impairment to ‘dementia pugilistica‘ – a form of dementia caused by repetitive low level damage to the brain.

When his condition gradually deteriorated, Ad Wolgast was readmitted to hospital in 1927. While he remained there for the rest of his life, Ad continued to train in his room.; According to his obituary, that typically involved frequent shadowboxing, bobbing, and uppercuts against imaginary opponents. Ad Wolgast seemed largely unaware of his surroundings except on rare occasions when he would plaintively ask where he was and when he would be allowed to leave. His boxing career may have been long over but it still took two hospital attendants to restrain him whenever he was forced to do something he didn’t want to do. By all reports, his “tough guy” reputation and violent temper earned him numerous beatings in hospital but he always recovered quickly enough. He went blind in the final few years of his life.

Link to Providentia on ‘The Michigan Wildcat’.

New Scientist has a gallery of wonderful images from radiologist Kai-hung Fung who makes awesomely beautiful pictures from CT scans.

The brain image (pictured) is particularly beautiful, it is labelled:

This image looks directly down through the top of the patient’s head.

The complex network of arteries and veins in the brain can be seen in shades of dark blue and the skull base is shown in green in the background.

Link to gallery of beautiful Kai-hung Fung images.

ABC Radio National’s Artworks programme interviews two creators of a new play about the mind and motivations of psychologist and serial monkey abuser Harry Harlow.

Harlow was a fascinating and troubled fellow who completed some of the most notorious studies in psychology where he raised monkeys apart from their mothers, most famously with ‘wire cage’ substitutes of various kinds.

He found that infant monkeys preferred to hang on to a wire cage ‘mother’ surrounded by cloth regardless of whether it provided food or not, suggesting to Harlow that comfort was of prime importance.

Over time his studies evolved and became increasingly cruel, until even those closest to his work felt he had gone too far.

The maternal deprivation studies are widely cited but they really told us little except the obvious fact that early relationships are important. This was widely promoted by the Neo-Freudians who felt Freud’s focus on infant sexuality was clearly missing the mark and had already been confirmed by extensive studies in children from deprived families conducted by London’s Tavistock Clinic years before.

More interesting, however, is Harlow himself – a man who was frequently depressed and estranged from his own mother, and the play deals with the psychology of this complex character.

The play is on in Melbourne, Australia but the discussion is also fascinating as the creators have clearly thought a great deal about the ethics of the research and Harlow’s own motivations.

Link to discussion on Artworks.
Link to more information about the play.

Meg Barker is a psychologist who specialises in understanding non-conventional sexuality and relationships. As well as being a researcher, Meg is also a psychotherapist where she puts her research into practice to help people overcome sex and relationship difficulties.

Having completed a great deal of research on bisexuality and ‘BDSM’ culture, Meg also has a particular interest in ‘polyamory‘ and non-monogamous relationships and has recently co-edited a forthcoming book on the topic with psychologist Darren Langdridge which attempts to understand the diverse experiences of non-monogamous relationships.

She’s also been kind enough to talk to Mind Hacks about her work and interests.

Continue reading “Five minutes with Meg Barker”

One of the most famous and most mythologised studies in psychology concerns John Watson’s experiment to condition ‘Little Albert’ to be afraid of a white rat. ‘Little Albert’ and his mother moved away afterwards and no-one knew what happened to him, leading to one of the most enduring mysteries in psychology. Finally, it seems, his identity has been discovered.

An article in the latest edition of American Psychologist recounts a detective story, led by psychologist Hall Beck, to try and solve the question of what happened to ‘Little Albert’ after his participation in the famous study.

The experiment itself consisted of showing the infant some live animals, most notably a white rat, and some other assorted objects, to demonstrate he had no pre-existing fear of them.

On several later occasions, when playing happily with the white rat, Watson and his colleague Rosalie Rayner struck a metal bar to frighten the young child. Subsequently, simply seeing the rat was enough to cause Albert to cry and show visible distress – demonstrating the phenomenon of classical conditioning, where something previously neutral can be associated with the responses triggered by something else.

Although accounts vary, Albert may have shown generalisation of his learnt response, so he became distressed at things like rabbits, dogs and furry coats, despite the fact that experimenters never presented these with a frightening noise.

‘Little Albert’ and his mother moved away from the university, his identity was lost and for years psychologists and historians have wondered what happened to the unwilling star in one of the landmark studies of the 20th century.

The first step was to find out exactly when the experiments took place and then to try and identify Albert’s mother from the information given in Watson’s original studies.

Careful sifting of financial and residency records put the researchers onto a campus wet nurse called Arvilla Merritte, but there the trail went cold.

There were no others traces of Arvilla Merritte but a search for her maiden name, Arvilla Irons, revealed that her married name was likely fictitious to hide the fact that her baby was illegitimate.

However, Irons’ baby was not called Albert, but Douglas, and it wasn’t until the Irons family got in touch to send a photo of the baby that the researchers could try and make a physical comparison.

The photos were blurry and they recruited the help of an FBI forensics expert to compare the images. The comparison suggested that the photos were likely of the same person and with the other matching biographical details it seems very likely that Douglas Merritte was indeed ‘Little Albert’.

The story has a tragic ending, however, as Douglas Merritte died when only six years old after developing hydrocephalus, a build up of fluid in the brain, possibly due to a meningitis infection.

Beck finishes the article on a melancholy note, reflecting on his own part in the story, Little Albert’s short life and his visit to his grave:

As I watched Gary and Helen put flowers on the grave, I recalled a daydream in which I had envisioned showing a puzzled old man Watson’s film of him as a baby. My small fantasy was among the dozens of misconceptions and myths inspired by Douglas.

“The sunbeam‚Äôs smile, the zephyr‚Äôs breath,
All that it knew from birth to death.”

None of the folktales we encountered during our inquiry had a factual basis. There is no evidence that the baby’s mother was “outraged” at her son’s treatment or that Douglas’s phobia proved resistant to extinction. Douglas was never deconditioned, and he was not adopted by a family north of Baltimore.

Nor was he ever an old man. Our search of seven years was longer than the little boy’s life. I laid flowers on the grave of my longtime “companion,” turned, and simultaneously felt a great peace and profound loneliness.

Link to summary of article in American Psychologist.

The BPS Research Digest has a fantastic feature where they’ve invited some of the world’s leading psychologists to discuss one nagging thing they still don’t understand about themselves.

Some take the challenge as a query about themselves as human beings, others about them personally, and the answers are a wonderful mix of the scientific and personal, the profound and ephemeral.

This is one of the many highlights, from social psychologist Norbert Schwartz, cursing his inability to detect his own biases:

One nagging thing I don‚Äôt understand about myself is why I‚Äôm still fooled by incidental feelings. Some 25 years ago Jerry Clore and I studied how gloomy weather makes one‚Äôs whole life look bad — unless one becomes aware of the weather and attributes one‚Äôs gloomy mood to the gloomy sky, which eliminates the influence. You‚Äôd think I learned that lesson and now know how to deal with gloomy skies. I don‚Äôt, they still get me. The same is true for other subjective experiences, like the processing fluency resulting from print fonts [pdf] ‚Äì I still fall prey to their influence. Why does insight into how such influences work not help us notice them when they occur? What makes the immediate experience so powerful that I fail to apply my own theorizing until some blogger asks a question that brings it to mind?

In fact, there are several pieces where psychologists gently bemoan their inability to apply their research findings to their own life, giving the series a slightly wistful feel.

Link to BPS Research Digest ‘One nagging thing…’ series.

An extraordinary 2006 article from The New York Times profiles ultra-endurance cyclist Jure Robič who apparently regularly loses his sanity during his races Рliterally becoming psychotic as he pushes himself to the limit.

The craziness is methodical, however, and Robic and his crew know its pattern by heart. Around Day 2 of a typical weeklong race, his speech goes staccato. By Day 3, he is belligerent and sometimes paranoid. His short-term memory vanishes, and he weeps uncontrollably. The last days are marked by hallucinations: bears, wolves and aliens prowl the roadside; asphalt cracks rearrange themselves into coded messages. Occasionally, Robic leaps from his bike to square off with shadowy figures that turn out to be mailboxes. In a 2004 race, he turned to see himself pursued by a howling band of black-bearded men on horseback…

In a consideration of Robic, three facts are clear: he is nearly indefatigable, he is occasionally nuts, and the first two facts are somehow connected. The question is, How? Does he lose sanity because he pushes himself too far, or does he push himself too far because he loses sanity? Robic is the latest and perhaps most intriguing embodiment of the old questions: What happens when the human body is pushed to the limits of its endurance? Where does the breaking point lie? And what happens when you cross the line?

It’s a wonderfully written article that touches on the man himself, the physiology of fatigue and the psychological strain of intense athletic feats.

Link to NYT article on Jure Robič.

The BBC Radio 4 programme Saturday Live recently had a segment on the UK Government’s belated apology to Alan Turing for his 1952 conviction for homosexuality. The programme’s resident poet, Matt Harvey, penned this short but poignant poem to mark the occasion:

here’s a toast to Alan Turing
born in harsher, darker times
who thought outside the container
and loved outside the lines
and so the code-breaker was broken
and we’re sorry
yes now the s-word has been spoken
the official conscience woken
– very carefully scripted but at least it’s not encrypted –
and the story does suggest
a part 2 to the Turing Test:
1. can machines behave like humans?
2. can we?

 
Link to programme details. Scroll down for poem.

I love this abstract of a scientific paper on ‘Neurological Problems of Jazz Legends’. It’s full of medical jargon but if you read it out loud it sounds like a beat poem. Try it with the same rhythm as Ginsberg’s poem Howl.

Neurological problems of jazz legends

J Child Neurol. 2009 Aug;24(8):1037-42.

Pearl PL.

A variety of neurological problems have affected the lives of giants in the jazz genre.

Cole Porter courageously remained prolific after severe leg injuries secondary to an equestrian accident, until he succumbed to osteomyelitis, amputations, depression, and phantom limb pain.

George Gershwin resisted explanations for uncinate seizures and personality change and herniated from a right temporal lobe brain tumor, which was a benign cystic glioma.

Thelonious Monk had erratic moods, reflected in his pianism, and was ultimately mute and withdrawn, succumbing to cerebrovascular events.

Charlie Parker dealt with mood lability and drug dependence, the latter emanating from analgesics following an accident, and ultimately lived as hard as he played his famous bebop saxophone lines and arpeggios.

Charles Mingus hummed his last compositions into a tape recorder as he died with motor neuron disease.

Bud Powell had severe posttraumatic headaches after being struck by a police stick defending Thelonious Monk during a Harlem club raid.

If beat poetry aint your bag, try dropping it to the beat of Gang Starr’s wonderful track Jazz Thing, which, among other things, taught me the recondite word ‘recondite‘.

Link to PubMed entry for ‘Neurological Problems of Jazz Legends’.
Link to Gang Starr’s Jazz Thing.

The New York Times has a huge article on the forthcoming publication of the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung’s ‘Red Book’, the notebook he kept during the six years of his ‘creative illness’ in which he was clearly psychotic but found inspiration for some of his most influential ideas.

Jung is one of the most interesting people in the history of psychology. He was both an experimentalist and an analyst in the Freudian tradition, before rejecting Freud (causing him to feint at one point!) and branching out into his own system of analytical psychology.

His works are often concerned with interests that even at the time were considered a little outlandish, such as the far reaches of world religions, UFOs and myths, but he explained almost all of them in terms of psychological phenomena.

He was the first to create a comprehensive classification of personality and his work still forms the basis of the Myers-Briggs personality inventory. He has been accused of being a Nazi, and, although untrue, it is clear that he was ambiguous about the Third Reich when a firm rejection was needed.

And most interesting, perhaps, was what he called his ‘confrontation with the unconscious’, shortly after his split from Freud, when he spent six years, largely isolated at home, having visions, hearing voices, fighting what he interpreted as his own internal forces.

Jung came out of this period with some of his most distinctive ideas all of which he noted in his ‘Red Book’ which has been kept behind closed doors by the Jung family for years.

The book has gained an almost mythical status and The New York Times article is as much about the long saga of getting into print, almost 90 years after it was written, as it is about Jung himself.

It also gives an interesting insight into the culture of Jungian analysts themselves, who have been a breed apart ever since their subversion of the Freudian mainstream after Jung went his own way.

A fascinating piece of psychological history.

Link to NYT on ‘The Holy Grail of the Unconscious’.

ABC Radio National’s Philosopher’s Zone has a fantastic programme discussing Michel Foucault’s influential book ‘Madness and Civilisation’ on the 50th anniversary of its publication.

The book is nominally a history of madness since the enlightenment. Foucault argues that the age saw a cultural shift where madness was distinguished from reason and the civilised mind and where the mad were marked out and separated from mainstream society.

He argues that Europe began creating legal and social mechanisms to control those they deemed mad. Not least among these was the invention of the asylum and Foucault cites the 17th century as where lunatics began to be banished to these imposing human warehouses in what he called the ‘great confinement’.

Except, it never happened. As the late great medical historian Roy Porter noted in his book A Social History of Madness (ISBN 1857995023), there is no evidence of a systematic confinement of the mad in the 17th century.

The records show that France was the only country in Europe to centralise its administration of services for the ‘pauper madman’ while other countries didn’t typically have any legislation in place until the 19th century.

This detail is glossed over by the programme but, by examining some other of Foucault’s claims, it does make a similar point that Madness and Civilisation isn’t actually a very good history book.

This has only recently become clear to many as while an abridged version has been available for years in English, the full translation, including the now clearly inadequate references to historical sources, was only published in 2005.

Perhaps the book’s lasting legacy is not in the details of the rather shaky arguments but in the way in which Foucault approached the subject: showing that medical and scientific concepts are influenced as much by cultural beliefs and fashions as by empirical data.

By the way, Porter’s A Social History of Madness is a little academic in it’s style but is otherwise absolutely fantastic. It got glowing reviews from pretty much everyone in psychiatry including arch ‘anti-psychiatrist’ Thomas Szasz, which is quite an achievement in itself.

Link to Philosopher’s Zone on Madness and Civilisation.

I’ve just discovered that David Bowie’s song All the Madmen is about his half brother and his time as a patient at the recently closed Cane Hill psychiatric hospital on the outskirts of South London.

In fact, the hospital is pictured on one of the original versions of the cover to his classic album The Man Who Sold the World, as you can see from the image on the left.

The main part of Cane Hill hospital has been closed since the early 90s and was largely dilapidated, but one unit was still in operation until it finally closed last year.

Being one of the few remaining vacant Victorian asylums, it was regularly visited by bored youths and curious urban explorers and there are hundreds of videos of the abandoned hospital buildings on YouTube.

As is the fate of all old asylums in the UK, it is in the process of being turned into luxury flats.

However, I suspect it’s also the setting for the recent video ‘Take Me to the Hospital’ from purveyors of rave The Prodigy, but I can’t find anything which confirms which old hospital they filmed in, so it will have to remain speculation.

Link to Wikipedia on All the Madmen.
Link to audio of track on YouTube.
Link to Wikipedia on Cane Hill Hospital.