Whitney Bammel's Archive

Existential Guilt

1 Commentby   |  04.24.10  |  The Schools of Psychology (Part IV)

I am personally a pretty big fan of existential psychology. I don’t necessarily think it is the best form of therapy for everyone or that it “trumps” any of the other schools of psychology, I just find it extremely interesting and beneficial, particularly in my personal life.

One of the aspects I find most intruiging is the idea of existential guilt. The following is a brief quote about Heidegger’s view of guilt: “Heidegger believed that if we do not exercise our personal freedom, we experience guilt. Because most people do not fully exercise their freedom to choose, they experience at least some guilt. All humans can do to minimize guilt is try to live an authentic life–that is, to recognize and live in accordance with their ability to choose their own existence.”

I think this is a fairly legit way to describe why we experience guilt. I tend to lean towards the position that humans have a least some kind of free will to makes choices in their life, and therefore, I know that when I personally fail to make the “right” decisions about something, I am often left with a strong sense of guilt. For example, when I used to lie to my parents about something that happened at school, I became so full of guilt that I would eventually have to go running back to them to appologize and tell them how I lied. Overall, I think that this existential view of guilt rings true, and the best way to limit the amount of guilt in one’s life is to live an authentic life.

Galton and Intelligence

7 Commentsby   |  03.12.10  |  Beginning of Scientific Psychology (Part III)

As of today, I think I now want to grow up to become Sir Francis Galton. Before I read the chapters, I am fairly positive I had no idea who this guy was which is crazy because he basically did….well….. everything. The last section on Galton in the textbook provides  a good summary of his many “firsts”: “the study of the nature-nurture question, the use of questionnaires, the use of a word-association test, twin studies, the study of imagery, intelligence testing, and the development of the correlational technique.” Of all of these contributions, I found the most interesting to be Sir Galton’s viewpoints on intelligence. He believed intelligence was connected with sensory acuity and that the more acute one’s senses, the more intelligent they must be. Galton tried to measure this intelligence through his anthropometric laboratory where he measured people’s heads because he saw that as an indirect way to measure brain size. And according to him, those who have the biggest brains are the smartest and brightest individuals.

All I know is that I am glad the size of our head doesn’t have anything to do with how smart we are. It would be a terrible thing for our society to have the intelligent people so set apart from everyone else because they could be identified through such an obvious physical aspect. We would be able to guess a person’s intelligence just by looking at them. And would this mean that college today would be totally different? Instead of taking the ACT or SAT to get into school, would we have to go sit and have our heads measured? So then only those with big heads would get into college. And then it could be more possible for those with big heads to survive in the world because they are the only ones with an education. Then we could start talking about survival of the fittest. It could really ugly really fast.

And we would all be walking around wishing we had bigger heads, and to me, that’s just weird.


7 Commentsby   |  02.18.10  |  Renaissance/Premodern (Part II)

Although we haven’t really talked about him in class, I found myself interested in the opinions of Auguste Comte. More specifically, I found it amusing that he was interested in science only if it was going to improve society. Our textbook says that Comte felt that “Knowledge, whether scientific or not, was not important unless it had some practical value.” This really stood out to me while I was reading because I have had this same thought while reading about many of the people we have learned about in this class. We have already covered hundreds of years of material and it seems like so many of the scholars we have read about have been concerned with what seem to me to be pointless things. Personally, I do not find philosophy that interesting. I read about these people and I think to myself, they spent their entire lives thinking about things that don’t matter. For example, the question of where knowledge comes from. How does it benefit the human race to know the answer to this question? Can’t we just take what we considered to be knowledge and use it for the good of the population??

Ok so I probably sound a bit liberal, but I kinda like the idea of focusing on the things that can make a difference in society rather than the abstract ideas that might be cool, but really don’t contribute anything. In reality, I know that these philosophers had a great impact on history and the things we study today. If they didn’t make an impact then there would be no point in even having this class. And I’m really not even anti-philosophy, I just happen to find myself more interested in the physiological aspects of psychology.

Who’s got soul?!?!

6 Commentsby   |  01.27.10  |  Pre-Renaissance (Part I)

Although I’m not quite sure why, one of the things I felt was most interesting from our readings was Aristotle’s concept of The Hierarchy of Souls. Our book tells us (on pg. 52-53) that this hierarchy consists of three different types of souls: a vegetative soul, a sensitive soul, and a rational soul. A vegetative soul is one that is attributed to plants and might also be called the nutritive soul because it allows for growth, nutrition, and reproduction. A sensitive soul is one possessed by animals but not by plants. It contains the elements of the vegetative soul but also includes sensitive sense and response to the environment,  allows the animal to experience both pleasure and pain as well as to have memory. And finally, the rational soul is one only possessed by humans. It gives us the other souls with the addition of being able to think and have rational thoughts.

I think this is really cool because it sounds like it would make sense. When I am playing with my dog, for example, I feel like he has some kind of soul. He is kind and caring and loyal. How can he be all these things but not have some kind of soul?? But with Aristotle’s point of view, my dog does have a soul, its just one that doesn’t have the “rational thinking” aspect like mine. How you would prove that my dog or the tree in my backyard actually has a soul I do no know, but it made me think about how Aristotle’s idea really parallels the way God created us. A hierarchy of soul makes sense when we consider that God created all living things in a hierarchy. He created the land and the plants first, then animals, then humans. And he told man “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and ever tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the creatures that move on the ground– everything that has the breath of life in it–I give every green plant for food.” So, I know this passage doesn’t necessarily show anything about souls, I just found it cool that Aristotle’s view of soul parallels that of our importance in creation.

Whitney Bammel's Comment Archive

  1. Whitney Bammel on Psychology and Faith
    8:49 pm, 04.28.10

    I am not sure how to answer all of these questions, and honestly I know that I just can’t. But I will say something on the idea of a question you ask in part #1.

    “Do you think pathology (of any type) is part of God’s plan for how he made us unique?”

    This may be a strange way of looking at this, but I would like to think that pathology is not something that God created. I like to think that any kind of pathology is the result of our inability to be “perfect” due to the fall of man. I am terrible at explaining things but I am going to do my best here.

    I think that before the fall of man there existed Adam and Eve who were “perfect” or made in the image of God, etc. After the fall is where all the problems emerged, and I think that pathology is merely one of those problems. Technically, we all experience pathology in some shape or form…. while they guy next to me might have schizophrenia, I have at least had a cold, or a rash, or a sinus infection. We all experience some kind of pathology, some are just different or more long-lasting than others.

    This might not make any sense at all. Who knows. :]

  2. Whitney Bammel on Underachievement
    8:40 pm, 04.28.10

    Great post and great example. I think that underachievement is actually a fairly big problem among people our age. I also think that some people are what I would call “chronic underachievers.” These people are typically not the ones you will find at a university, especially not a prestigious, hard-to-get-into university. I have so many aquaintances from high school that still live with their parents and are working minimal paying jobs and quite frankly I think many of them do this just because they can. Although I don’t know for sure, I think that many of these people are simply too afraid of the possibility of failing after trying to achieve something, so they simple choose to strive towards nothing at all. Every time I go home to visit my family and old friends I see more and more of this happening and I think it could actually cause a big problem among our society. It is important that we have a fresh generation full of brains willing to contribute to society, whether or not they fully succeed at something or not.

  3. Whitney Bammel on Sports Psychology, Psychoanalysis, and the Garden of Eden
    8:31 pm, 04.28.10

    Wow. You have a cool brain. In other words… everything I just read here is something way bigger than anything I think I could ever come up with.

    With that said, I am not sure exactly how to approach this… simply because some of it might have gone a little bit over my head :]. But I do find your idea of these three things being connected very interesting. I especially like your statement that these “flow” moments might actually be glimpses of the glory that man once was. I think this could definitely be true! And I completely understand what you mean by “flow” moment.

    Honestly, I don’t have anything completely intellectual to say about this but I do like how much it got me thinking. I really appreciate this post!

  4. Whitney Bammel on
    8:20 pm, 04.28.10

    I really like this! I think this is a great form of therapy for these veterans. Finding unique ways such as this to cope with difficult sitations or, in this case, memories of difficult situations, is something that I think Frankl would definitely advocate for.

  5. Whitney Bammel on
    6:14 pm, 04.24.10

    I felt the same way about all of our discussions about conditioning in relation to phobias. I was especially interested in the stuff we talked about in terms of OCD. I really think my boyfriend is OCD… The one thing he does that drives me crazy is that he locks his car 5 times with the little clicker thing. Every. Single. Time. It’s rediculous. It was nice to here that there are ways to get rid of this problem through conditioning. :]

  6. Whitney Bammel on Mental Imagery
    6:28 pm, 03.22.10

    Ahhhhh that really is crazy! I would have always though that everyone could produce mental images also! Mental imagery also holds an important place in my life also, but in kind of a different way. These images help me when I am working on my scrapbooking and card-making (some of my nerdy little hobbies:]). Being able to image what things will look like helps me create better pieces that come out looking really awesome! I can’t imagine how different things would be for me if I didn’t have this capability.

  7. Whitney Bammel on Characteristics of Men & Women
    6:24 pm, 03.22.10

    Haha this might be my favorite post of all, especially with Logan’s comment! I find the differences between men and women to be SOOOOOO fascinating. Mostly, I just can’t imagine how men can live their lives without talking so much. I love to talk:]

  8. Whitney Bammel on True or False?
    6:18 pm, 03.22.10

    Truth is something that is interesting to me as well. I find it really interesting that people with little knowledge about something will try to profess that what they know is the truth even when someone who knows the subject well tells the other person that their truth is not really truth. And I agree with both Page and Kimberly, I think that it just depends on the situation. Sometimes I think it is just the “lens” we are viewing things from, but sometimes I also think that ignorance and lack of interest play a big part as well. I really think that Kimberly’s comment here has covered mostly how I feel… that I think our “lens” is influenced by ignorance and lack of interest.

  9. Whitney Bammel on WOMAN!!!!.......I NEED YOU!!!
    6:15 pm, 03.12.10

    Women are definitely a wonderful creation! I don’t really want to use the word best, but I think they are surely something to be valued :] While we are surely something to be valued, I will say, I praise God for boys. If I had to sit around and spend my time with girls all of the time I think I would go absolutely insane. :]

  10. Whitney Bammel on You are what you eat
    12:12 am, 02.23.10

    This is really interesting! I have honestly never heard of the Feingold diet but from the link you shared I felt like I got a great overview! It is really crazy to me to think that our behavior could be altered just by eating different foods but it makes a lot of sense to me. Even on a daily basis I have noticed that my moods are different based on what I eat. When I tend to eat a significant amount of foods that are unhealthy and contain a lot of preservatives, my attitude tends to plummet. The opposite tends to be true when I eat healthy food. Eating right just makes you feel so much better! I definitely liked how you tied this in with our reading!