Brady Campbell's Archive

We just went over Rogers in class. Now I’m glad we saved the best until now. If I had had to listen to Freudian psychoanalysis after a far better theory(of Rogers) I probably would have fallen asleep. Basically, Rogers was a beast. He observed the “truth” around him, discerned its falsehood, and had the balls to step up and not only shed light on the almost worthlessness of Freudian theory, but invent a new, much better form himself.
Why does Rogers’ theory work better than Freud’s?
Rogers’ is easily falsifiable(compared to Freud’s)
Rogers’ is powerful because it motivates the client to help himself, instead of having faith in the counselor.
Rogers’ doesn’t have assumptions. It tackles everything it can through an honest and open relationship.

If I go to counseling, it’ll be Rogers-inspired. If I ever preform counseling, it will be Rogers-inspired. And if I ever tell a joke about counseling, it will be Freud-inspired.

Free will.
Do you have it?

If you do, then you’re responsible for your actions. You’re responsible for yourself.

If you don’t…well then you’re not responsible for your actions. Your choices in religion, or in anything else aren’t in your control. So laws don’t really make much sense….So civilization doesn’t have any foundation….and if people are meant to live without civilization, then what’s the point in life? What could possibly be the reason? Hedonism? But Hedonism is greater with civilization. Why exist without free will? I suppose if there is no God…then perhaps it is possible. Otherwise, no-it is not possible.

Can we test free will?
We can give proof for its existence. We each make decisions every day and exercise our free will extensively.
Can we disprove free will? No.
Can we reason that there is no free will? I certainly can’t, and I’ve been trying hard. Nor have I seen an acceptable line of reason from anything I’ve read.
I suppose free will, although true, is much closer to the black-sheep paradox(or perhaps a better one that I’m unfamiliar with.)
We can prove the appearance of it’s existence, but perhaps we can’t really prove it as a fact…
Either way, I think it’s just about the first thing I will believe in.

While reading about Jean Jacques Rousseau I discovered his belief that children are inherently good. I find that not only interesting but surprising because I disagree.
I think that we are born selfish. As humans, we want to satisfy our desires. I think it makes much more sense that we have no native understanding of goodness, fairness, or equality. I think that we are inherently evil. When I see kids play together I observe the stealing that takes place. I see that Child A finds the toy of Child B interesting, and thus takes it for himself. Children do not know how to compromise. They do not care about the desires of others. Adults teach children how to function in society.
Mr. Rousseau says that children are naturally good. He advises that we let them go, in a sense, and give advice sparingly. I say Nay! Children need disciple, love, and example much more than freedom.

After commenting on Bradye’s post about dreams I was still excited about dreams. This explains the subject of this post.

She said the Greeks noted how a person’s wild desires came out during sleep. I translated their words into our more modern terms and talked about a bit of what I’ve concluded about dreaming after some recent studying I’ve done.

Dreams are crazy.

I wanted to start more conversation about them since they’re a big interest of mine. Maybe it’s wrong of me to assume that anyone will comment more than 4 times total, but just in case someone gets interested I’ll try to make things entertaining.

I think I’d like to make a little case for Plato vs. Aristotle in view of happiness. However, I do not promise exemplary organization or clarity, just sound reason(hopefully).

When we dream, our mind focuses on different subjects in order to satisfy the id, according to what we have been thinking about or if you will, fixated on. There actually is a difference between these. Freud uses childhood fixations in his dream interpretation, where as I would believe in “smaller” desires. However, I won’t go much into that. So our fixations make our ids long and burn for something, which our egos squash for practical purposes. Our ego doesn’t make us happy, our id does. I do not mean that the only happiness is pleasure gratification, just that fulfilling the id makes us happy. If we accept that, then we accept that we have an appetitive nature to some extent. When we accept that, we see that Aristotle’s view that happiness really comes from fulfilling our purpose(paraphrased) isn’t complete. I do think that fulfilling purpose brings happiness, but to say that it is the only source? I say Nay.

Suppose you have severe health problems, including insomnia, arthritis, dysentery, and how about herpes(why not). You live your life morally, raise kids, succeed at work, marry successfully and happily, etc. However, every day you hurt when you move. You constantly ache, you know that you’re stuck with illnesses chronically. Are you happy? No. You’re happy that you’ve done many great things, but you’re still miserable because you’re always in pain. Even though I would argue that the happiness of doing the things I listed above is superior to the happiness of physical health, I still think pain can prevent happiness. The example could be changed many ways, but the point is really all that matters. Part of our happiness comes from our physical appetites, our appetitive nature.

Therefore, Plato’s view of happiness is more complete than Aristotles’ view is.

So I’d say I’ve made a post now, but I want to talk about dreams, and as I have the time thanks to all this glorious snow, I shall.

The main thing I focused on the last few months while researching dreaming was dream vividness. It appears that there is a wide range in reported vividness. Some people, like me, have very poor dream vividness. They report vague ideas, concept, settings, details, but more rare amounts of color, edges, etc. Usually in my dreams I may know what I’m doing, who I’m talking to, but It’s not really that clear. I’ll know I’m looking at a neighborhood, and that I can see stars, lights, a sign, houses, a street, cars, etc., and I might know what colors they are, but I can’t really see the colors. And no, I’m not colorblind or anything. Actually, I guess I’ll go into my personal stuff here for comparison to anyone else who might comment about theirs. My health is sub-par, I have major trouble sleeping, I have serious neck pain, some back pain and curvature problems, I have some bone problems. I also have hereditary tinnitus.(just that lucky I guess). I’ll let you look that up yourself. I can’t think of anything else that would significantly affect my sleep other than my uvulitis. Personally, I usually remember at least 2 dreams per night. Right now I remember hundreds of my dreams, all the way back to when I was in kindergarten. Oh yeah, that reminds me, I also have hyponogogic hallucinations, which were actually post-sleep as well when I was a child. I often dream about some adventure, some mission, usually silly and without actual importance. Maybe someone is trying to kill me, or I’m being chased. Sometimes my friend and I have to escape from some weird place. Some of my dreams are very long, perhaps 15 minutes straight.(time isn’t too easy to understand for dreams vs. reality), others are just a few seconds long though, short flashes. Sometimes my dreams will continue after non rem cycles, and some nights I’ll have repeat dreams. I’ve had a few dreams dozens of times, and occasionally I can change them willfully. I have many racing or flying dreams as well. I’m not exactly afraid of snakes, just cautious, but in my dreams snakes are always terrifying. About a third of all my nightmares have snakes in them, a ton of them.(Of course all venomous and unrealistically aggressive, like from “Snakes on a Plane”) I have found that I have huge cycles, ones lasting weeks, months, and years. As a kid my dreams were different than they are now, during vacation my dreams are different than when I’m in school, etc. I’ve had actual pain in a couple nightmares and been unable to wake up. I can’t think of much more to include in this, and I feel like I’m just going on and on. Other people have reported that their dreams are virtually indistinguishable from wakefulness. I can’t imagine dreams being that real. I don’t know if I’ve ever smelled anything in a dream, but I would love to someday if possible. Maybe some of you have vivid dreams…

So, I hope a few people will comment about that school stuff, and then also all about their dreams. Maybe about your health, thought patterns, most memorable dreams, dream vividness, how many dreams you can remember, characters, mood, settings, etc. Let it all out peeps! We’re psychology students, I think we should be comfortable sharing our dreams(I realize that’s not quite right, but I’m on to something right?)

You know, I think we should have more about this. I’d be ALL for professor McAnulty and Professor Beck co-leading a special interest class on dreams this Fall or next Spring. Anybody else think you’d want to take that?? Let ’em know. Maybe we could do class projects where we studied our dreams and compared them for research. Maybe we could actually grow during the class and learn about ourselves through sharing and analyzing our dreams, our goals and desires. And maybe…I don’t know, maybe we’ll……learn to play this game like men.