#i want to be able to shed light on a variety of perspectives even if people dont agree with each other

[wildpeachfarm]

I understand people saying with 18 you aren't a real adult yet but... you are. I have the feeling mostly americans see 18 yo as 'children' still because a lot of stuff you can only do wth 21 there. In Europe you will be a full fledged adult and you will be treated like on. With 18 you can drink, you can drive, you will most likely be far enough in school to starts a career, depending on what you wanna do.

18 is grown up and the brain is developed enough to not make certain mistakes anymore. Not to forget that at first it was claimed she was 'freshly 18' when she was already 18 1/2.

People have to stop infantalizing grown up people. That's why Tommy turned out the way he is, cause people kept seeing and treating him as a child. Now that dude makes rape and necrophilia jokes because people keep saying 'he's basically still a child!'

No. Stop doing that. Let people take responsibilities as the adults that they are. With 18 you should know what is Sa and what not. You should know how you can ruin someone's whole life with making allegations like this.

If Caiti actually didn't know what she was doing, then she shouldn't be a Content Creator and stay off from the public image. She admitted she was there not to befriend people but to meet big creators and do networking. That's adult thinking.

Stop trying to push the morlas of 'she's not completely grown' on people who fucked up with something that someone with their age shouldn't fuck up with.

And I am saying that as a 18 year old myself btw. She KNEW what she was doing, she knewingly used terms that SA and rape victims use in her first stream, she knew she was getting drunk as well.

Sure the brain isn't completely developed yet, but enough to not do something like that

Ok here's some more anon thoughts on all of the age/alcohol talk

Honestly I understand everyone's points tbh. Like it's all a double-edged sword that applies to each 18 year old differently because I've seen some super independent, mature 18 year olds that have been living on their own for years, but also some veeery immature and sheltered ones that can barely function in the world. It all heavily depends on the situation imo

And as soon as alcohol is introduced, it immediately becomes 10x messier so yeah this situation is just very nuanced and I think everyone will feel a little bit differently about it based on their personal experiences at that age and I get that 100%.

Like I personally was a very mature and independent 18 year old but I know people who weren't and still act like children even into their 20s. It really varies person-to-person

#all of you guys are valid for your experiences and perspective based on those experiences #i want to be able to shed light on a variety of perspectives even if people dont agree with each other #just keep it respectful and we will be good #ask #anon #anti drummyache tag

[kiingocreative]

The Structure of Story is now available! Check it out on Amazon, via the link in our bio, or at https://kiingo.co/book

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I recently discovered the work of couples therapist Esther Perel, and I’ve been fascinated by her work on erotic intelligence. In her book Mating in Captivity, she proposes that what kills desire and eroticism within a couple is proximity and familiarity. From there, she argues, it goes that instilling a dimension of distance and mystery in a relationship is the best way to reignite the flame of desire. By doing so, we learn to look at our partner in a different light, we discover new sides of them and all that unknown sparks attraction again.

This got me thinking…

I’ve been working on my second novel, The Dhawan Brothers, for a little over a year now, and it feels to me that my relationship to my manuscript has evolved over that time. From intrigue and mystique working on the initial drafts, to excitement and enthusiasm polishing and editing later versions to, slowly but surely, a sort of ‘been there, done that’ attitude that makes me prone to procrastination. I’m at a stage now where little in the story will change, or at least not dramatically. I know the characters and the plot, and I love them dearly,but they just don’t make me feel those same stomach flutters I had in the beginning.

And so I wonder…

Could our relationship with our writing be affected by proximity and familiarity the way desire is in our human relationships? Is it that, the moment we get too close, when we know everything there is to know about the other entity, it loses some of its appeal?

If that’s the case, is the key to making sure we remain excited about our writing diligentlycreating distance from it every once and a while?

To Take a Break or Not to Take a Break?

In a highly unofficial poll I ran in my Instagram storiesrecently, I asked the writing community about their experience. 94% of respondents said that, in general, they find it useful to take a break from their WIP. Whether it’s because ‘sometimes you just have to recharge’, because it’s ‘like refreshing your mind to be able to focus better’ when you get back to it, or because it ‘helps your brain work out problems behind the scenes’, writers seem to think a little distance goes a long way.

I was intrigued by the manyresponses that indicated taking some time off their WIP gives writers a chance to get back to it ‘with fresh eyes’. By stepping away from our work, we gain the perspective needed to look at it again from a different angle or through a different lens. That time and space away from our manuscript spark new ways of looking at our stories that we might have been too close to see before. We meet it again under different circumstances and in a different mindset, and it helps us rediscover it entirely. This, in turns peaksour interest and eagerness again.

Too Close for Comfort

But then… Isn’t that exactly what Perel’s theory is? That proximity and familiarity lessen desire in a relationship, whilst distance, mystery and fresh perspectives reignite it? When it comes to a writer’s relationship with their work, it feels to me like an interesting similarity.

In that same unofficial Instagram poll, when asked if there tends to be a stage at which they lose interest in their WIP or find themselves procrastinating, 75% of respondents said that’s indeed the case. The additional answers people gave as to when that happens were incredibly varied, for instance:

‘It depends if the passion for the project stays strong’

‘During the first draft’

‘In the middle’

‘In the editing process probably around the fifth or sixth draft’

‘This happens a lot because of self doubt. I struggle with it in all my life’

‘When things are not going the way I want them to’

‘There’s no particular stage, it just ebbs and flows. But I always come back to it’

‘It depends on the book’

There were as many distinctive responses as there were respondents. When I think of my own experience, I find my interest in my own work flaking right about the time the manuscript is polished. That moment where what’s mostly left to fix are stray typos and minor details, but the core of the story is there to stay. That’s the stage where there’s nothing in the writing process that’ll take me by surprise.

When I think of it, that’s exactly how I view and react to everything,in my relationships and in life in general. I like variety, and excitement, and adventure. The moment I get too familiar with anything, my attention starts to stray, until and unless I can find a way to make that situation or relationship appealing again.

Writing as a Relationship… With Ourselves?

I tend to believe that what we write says a lot about who we are as writers. I’m now also tempted to think that how we write says almost as much about us.

What if our relationship to our writing revealed what turns us on as people? And what tells us more about a person than their inner desires?

Yes, there seems to be a trend amongst the people I’ve heard from, in that most writers find distance from their work to be beneficial, and a large portion see their levels of interest in their WIP dwindle at some point or other. When and how and why, however, varies.

If there are as many ways for it to manifest as there are writers out there, I wonder if this becomes less about a relationship with our craft as it is about ourrelationship with our inner selves. A situation where observing how we treat our writing is like holding a mirror back at ourselves, reflecting our approach to any other of our relationships — and life — in general?

Know Thyself

In her book, Perel explains that exploring and understanding your own underlying desires sheds a great deal of light on how you’ll show up in your relationships, what will make you do the things you do, and what might cause you to stray. That sometimes your actions say less about the other person, or the situation, than they do about which of your buttons are getting pushed.

I think looking at how we deal with our writing follows the same logic.

So, if you’re like me, someone who craves new experiences and mystery and excitement, you may find yourself bored when things stabilise and all that’s left is maintenance and housekeeping. On the other hand, if you’re someone who thrives on stability and certainty, you may find the first draft excruciating, but the later stages more enjoyable.

And Then What?

What does that even matter, you might say? Just like any relationship, writing’s a journey and there are bound to be ups and downs we all need to navigate. Right?

Right. But I’d argue knowledge is power. Knowing how desire works, in any form of relationship — with others, with writing, with yourself — helps you understand that, not only there will be ups and downs, but also what specifically triggers your own ups and your own downs, and why. And that, in turn, can greatly help you smooth out those otherwise dizzying curves. If you know your buttons, you don’t have to let them control you. You can take charge.

The writing journey can be fraught with surprises and pitfalls, and every little helps. Understanding how your approach to your writing reflects your own inner tendencies can help you predict when an up or a down isabout to start. With some introspection, you can better prepare for these, capitalise on the highs and give yourself some kindness on — or even minimise — the lows.

If it can help make the journey that little bit easier, isn’t it worth a try?

#writingtips #screenwriting #creative writing #writers on tumblr #writers #writing #writerblr #writing advice #writing community #writing resources

[funkymbtifiction]

Thanks a lot for answering! I wonder could you please give examples of everyday deeds/types of behavior of different primaries and secondaries? Like what are they like when there's a school test or when they need to visit a doctor? The more the better. Something more down-to-earth than the situations from the fantasy movies listed on the website that may never take place in the real world, something found in everyday life that will help someone identify themselves and mb others around them

I’m not sure I can do that, because frankly, your Primary House is a state of mind. It’s what you want and how you feel about things (or do not feel, in the case of Ravenclaws, ahem). But I can talk about a few things, particularly in response to Harry Potter, that can shed light on the state of mind of the Primary.

What I have most noticed about people in general is that we all have a built-in bias, and in order to find our true type—whether that is our MBTI type, our Enneagram core and tritype, or our Hogwarts House combination—we must abandon our ego defenses. What does that mean? We have to overcome our biases and want to know our true self, and own it, more than we want to fight against an answer that might not please us. In the Enneagram, I’ve noticed particular biases against being a 2 or a 6. Everyone wants to be the more “glamorous” 4 or the elusive, bookworm 5.

Harry Potter, for better or worse, introduced us to the concept of Hogwarts Houses, but also introduced us to a bias, because it made Gryffindor the most glamorous House, due to all the main characters (however unrealistically) hailing from that House. Or, at least, all the main characters we like. Ravenclaw is full of wise weirdos like Luna Lovegood, who irrationally believes in things no one can prove. Slytherin is host to mostly back-stabbing, snobbish cheaters. And Hufflepuff is an “afterthought” where all “the boring, nice people are.”

What I like about Sorting Hat Chats is… they made the entire system more interesting and a lot fairer. Now, Slytherin isn’t the only House with villains automatically placed in it: their villains have to be specific in their love (and not betray their family, because it is the house of My Family is My Life). This also means people, fictional or real, who prioritize their loved ones, are Slytherins. Such as Mr. Darcy, or Katniss Everdeen. Suddenly, being a Slytherin doesn’t seem so bad, right? Not if you are loyal to the ones you love! That alone will appeal to the mindset of a Slytherin, because they will think, “Of COURSE I am. Of COURSE my loved ones come first! They SHOULD!”

I have friends in all four Primary Houses, but I will use myself as an example of the Ravenclaw. When I was reading the books, having all the main characters in Gryffindor bothered me, because not only did it show a bias, but I felt some of the main characters ‘belonged’ in other Houses—such as Remus Lupin being a Hufflepuff rather than a Gryffindor. I also felt like Hermione belonged in Ravenclaw. But that is neither here nor there… my objections to the system came from the logical flaws in how she arranged it. It wasn’t realistic to have everyone ‘important’ or ‘admirable’ within the story come from Gryffindor. It was easier to have them share Common Rooms, but people don’t isolate like that and only befriend someone from their House. They look for like-minded friends who share interests, and would make them all over the place. It was my little Ravenclaw brain, pulling away at her system and finding flaws in its logic, but reacting from a place of logical reasoning rather than moral indignation.

When I took the SHC test, it placed me in Slytherin. And I was not opposed to that. In fact, I explored it for a long time, as I thought about how I respond in various situations. Slytherin appealed to me, because… I wish I could stand up for my family automatically. I wish I could prioritize my loved ones all the time. But I kept hitting upon the fact that – I like to think about things in a detached manner, and come to what I feel is a rational consensus. It’s more clinical and less emotional than Slytherins are—and it helped at the time that I knew a Slytherin, and could easily see both how possessive she was of people (they are “mine to protect” – she always reminded me of Slytherin Sam Gamgee in The Lord of the Rings, with his “MY MR. FRODO”) and how, without fail, her sister came before even me, her best friend. Through comparison, I knew I had to be something else. So in typical Ravenclaw fashion, I went through and considered them all. Because, as a Ravenclaw, I want to be RIGHT more than protect my ego. I am always looking for the truth, even when it hurts. And I am always measuring the world against an ideal in my head, built up of my belief system. I do not go against my beliefs; I mold myself to them. And it shocks me to find others who do not, but who claim to be the same as I am. I take, for example, my Christian faith seriously—so what do you mean you are ignoring what your faith says, and doing whatever you want??? YOU MOLD TO YOUR BELIEFS, DON’T YOU? Well, yes, if you are a Ravenclaw, you do. If you are any other House, you do not.

The Hufflepuff Primary I know has a far more ‘felt’ opinion of the books and their sorting system. She got livid reading them, and thinking about how constantly unfair it all was, how biased Rowling was, and how Dumbledore was clearly playing favorites constantly with Gryffindor House. She developed a bad attitude about him as a result… which, of course, is coming from her being a Hufflepuff. To a Hufflepuff, people come first. They are all treated fairly and seen as equals. You do not discriminate, you do not alienate, you do not give unfair favors to Harry and his friends, just so Gryffindor can win the House Cup over and over again. She was actually so angry about this, from a Hufflepuff perspective, that she was willing to be a Slytherin in defiance of ‘The System’ until she realized that kind of mindset is… pure Hufflepuff. “You are not being fair about this, I will oppose you.” It’s all instinctual, it’s all emotional, and it’s all loyalty to the human race, which includes Slytherins. (This caused us some friction for awhile, until I realized it was “just a Hufflepuff” objection, because... how can you be mad at Dumbledore for that? It’s just a convenient plot device in the book! ... says the Ravenclaw who isn’t getting too emotionally involved. ;)

The Slytherin I know, by the way, denied being a Slytherin at first, because she felt ashamed of it. She has been taught to act like a Hufflepuff, that she SHOULD care about everyone all the time, but… she does not. She cares about her loved ones the most, and she would protect them above other people, every time. I pointed out to her that Hufflepuff fits her less than Slytherin, because “You ARE Katniss. You told me that once. That you identified so heavily with her, because you would go into the arena for your Prim.” And then she admitted it, and saw the gloriousness that is being a loyal Slytherin.

The Gryffindor I know is always looking for a Cause, and… as a Ravenclaw, I find that exhausting. She wants to be mad about things, because that anger gives her the fire she needs to do something about it. She has taken on big Causes by financially supporting the Causes she cares about, and done physical things about smaller Causes. For example, as a teenager, she came upon three guys tormenting a dog. It made her so livid, she charged straight at them, swearing and screaming at them to leave the animal alone, and it scared them all so much, they turned tail and ran. She just knew it was the right thing to do, and she and I often butt heads a lot, because she expects everyone else (meaning me) to be as passionate as she is about doing the ‘right thing.’ My more detached “well, let’s look at both sides of this issue” has no place in her black and white Gryffindor mind (no, that is WRONG).

Secondary Houses are… something that may take a little more time to figure out, as you think about how you handle the ‘unexpected.’

Gryffindors… have to speak up if they see an injustice, or hear something they disagree with. They are they person who cannot keep their mouth shut, they need to voice their opinion. They don’t care if you don’t like it or don’t agree, to not state their views would be antagonistic to their central self. My Hufflepuff friend is a Gryffindor Secondary. Not only did she get mad about the biases in Harry Potter, she complained loudly about it, to me, and to other people, and even in a blog post, because the injustice of it needed drawn-attention to, and dealt with, and she doesn’t really care if you disagree. That’s just how she rolls, about EVERYTHING. Because Gryffindor Secondaries state their views. They see an injustice, and they rush toward it. (My Gryffindor friend is also a Gryffindor Secondary: see dog being abused, rush in to do something about it!)

Ravenclaws… want to prepare for everything, and then rely on their own skill set to handle problems as they arise. They are the person who, when their bike breaks down halfway home, consider what they know about bikes (can they fix this easily?), and what they know about public transportation (am I going to be able to catch a bus home?), and make decisions from there. Or who study for a test in advance and show up, only to panic because they found out they read the wrong chapter in the book and know nothing about it. My father is a Gryffindor with a Ravenclaw Secondary, and he over-prepares himself with any useful knowledge he thinks he might need to combat a wide variety of situations—and then is stumped if confronted by something he did not prepare for, and knows nothing about. He is always trying to think ahead and prepare so that he doesn’t have to improvise anything at the last second—because he sucks at it.

It was a comparison with him that actually shifted me away from assuming I had a Ravenclaw Secondary, because… I don’t suck at improvising. I’m actually quite good at it. And I don’t over-prepare, because in true Hufflepuff Secondary position, I figure I can ask someone for help. And they always give it to me. But what really cemented the deal for me, in terms of recognizing my Puff Secondary House, were two—no, make that three, truths from my life. 1) Ravenpuffs distill complex information and put it back out into the world for others to enjoy (hello, Funky!). 2) Puff Secondaries show up and do the tireless work, clock the hours, and are highly reliable, which is… me. I have run this site day in and day out for years. I am punctual, fastidious, I put my responsibilities ahead of all else (even turning down fun occasions because I need to work), and I will painstakingly work on perfecting something, finishing something, improving something, or polishing something (even when I’m bored). In short, I show up and do the work. And 3) the truth that Puff Secondaries have friends to stand up for them, because they have proven themselves reliable and trustworthy, is no joke. A few years ago, I had trouble with someone online and, without being asked, three of our mutual friends came to my defense. Proof of the Puff.

Lastly, Slytherin Secondaries are highly adaptable. It’s no problem for them to shift their approach given the needs of the situation. It’s the equivalent of a friend you admire, but who puzzles you (if you don’t share their Slytherin Secondary trait) because… it seems like they are a different person everywhere you go, because whatever is needed, they can become it. They are the person who has no trouble with change and no need to plan, because they just trust that it’s all going to work out fine, based on their ability to adapt. It’s the person who shows up at a friend’s birthday party expecting it to be formal, finds out it’s casual, sneaks into the bathroom to rearrange their attire, and emerges ready to play Twister. Or who will be serious with you, joke constantly with your brother, and behave like a saint around your mom, according to whatever works and appeals to you the best.

Hope some of that helps, though it wasn’t explicitly what you asked for. Best this ENFP can do, since in-depth sensory specific examples require a heck of a lot more Si than I’ve got. :P

#question #hogwarts houses #ravenclaw #gryffindor #slytherin #hufflepuff #submission

[cptsdstudyblr]

Cults & Religious Abuse PART 2: So you’re in a cult?

If you don’t want to see this series, you can block #cptsdstudyblrreligion

tw// cults, religion, religious abuse, religious trauma, mentions of other types of abuse

PART 1: Q & A

In this post I will be speaking somewhat specifically about my experiences that led to religious trauma, so please be cautious when reading this post. The tips and resources are at the bottom and are bullet points, so feel free to skip to there if you aren’t comfy with the post itself.

Maybe you were raised in a religion, maybe you or your family joined a religion later in your life, or maybe you’ve gotten involved in a cult in some other way. But one day you wake up and you realize that you need to get out. But how? In this I’ll be sharing the basics of my experiences in a cult-like fundamentalist religion, how I got out, and some resources I think are helpful for people in similar situations.

Before I get into the details, I want to make one thing clear: I am not a woman. I am non-binary. However, I was raised a woman and that was a huge part of the way these experiences affected me, so I will be including that perspective in this post.

I also want to make it clear that I am not against religion in general or against people practicing religion. This post is not intended to attack religion as a concept, but to shed light on specific extremely harmful religious practices.

My family’s relationship with religion is on the complicated side, but I’ll briefly explain it for context. Both of my parents were raised fairly generically Catholic. My grandparents on my dad’s side are now loosely Catholic, but don’t explicitly practice religion. My grandmother on my mom’s side has since converted to protestant Christianity at my mom’s suggestion. My dad has been either apathetic or even hostile towards religion for as long as I can remember and rarely attended church with me and my mom, but my mom has always been religious. These are the primary influences in my life, as I’m not close enough to any other family members for their religious beliefs to have had significant impact on me. 

My mom is where it gets complicated. Although she was raised Catholic, she explored protestant Christianity starting a few years before my birth and quickly converted. For most of my actual childhood my mom was a pretty average protestant Christian. We moved a lot, so we attended churches in a variety of denominations, including several more charismatic and prosperity-gospel based megachurches, but when I was around 9 years old, my mom fell down a rabbit hole of Messianic Christianity through one of these churches, which I believe is where it all started to fall apart. Just to clarify, although this group of beliefs is technically referred to as Messianic Judaism, I refer to my experience with it as Messianic Christianity as I am in no way Jewish (and thus feel uncomfortable calling my religious experiences Judaism) and the messianic movement is harmful to actual Jewish people.

This move into Messianic Christianity pushed my mom to start rereading and reinterpreting the Bible and she consequently decided that she was not enamored with the teachings of the church we attended at the time. I strongly believe that her understanding of that study was also heavily influenced by the domestic violence and instability going on in our home at the time, as she was unable to connect to the overwhelmingly positive messages that our church preached. So, she moved us to another church. This was a church we had attended some in the past while trying to find a home church after a move, but hadn’t really stuck with, so it wasn’t an entirely new church. Because of this, I generally say that I attended this church from the age of 9 although we did not attend this church consistently until I was around 11. This church was a nondenominational Bible church closely associated with Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, CA, which is pastored by John MacArthur. I’d encourage you to take a look at the basic teachings of John MacArthur and of this church in some depth as they are already quite problematic. The linked article is really just one example of the kind of teachings that are prevalent here, and I’d encourage you to follow this rabbit hole as far as it takes you because it’s fascinating. 

The church that we moved to was extremely fundamentalist. Unfortunately, I’m not comfortable linking the actual church for fear of doxxing myself, but the teachings of this church are pretty much exactly in line with those Grace Community Church and the other organizations I will mention soon. This church also unofficially followed the teachings of the Institute for Basic Life Principles (IBLP). When I say unofficially, I mean that my church was not publically associated with IBLP, but they were definitely associated with IBLP in reality. And again, I’d really encourage you to browse through their website to get a feel for their teachings. However, as a basic summary, if you’re familiar with the Duggar family from the TLC reality show 19 Kids and Counting, they are members of IBLP and everything they teach was taught fairly similarly at my church. I won’t go into the details of what the teachings were, but they were about as fundamentalist Christian as you could come up with. Sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, abuse, etc. but turned up to 11/10. And it was a very closed circle. So how did I get out and end up where I am now - a bi-romantic asexual non-binary university student studying STEM at an incredibly liberal university?

It wasn’t easy. But I did get somewhat lucky. Unlike 90% of the kids at my church, I was not homeschooled after 8th grade. Instead, I went to a private Christian school - this was definitely still harmful and contributed to my trauma but it did give me opportunities to be exposed to people and ideas outside my fundamentalist Christian bubble. It also encouraged me to attend university, as it was expected of all graduates from that school. My dad wasn’t religious, and he and my mom divorced right before I graduated from high school. Additionally, my mom did encourage me to continue my education despite the teachings at our church. I’m not sure why she encouraged this, but she did. So I got lucky that things in my life pointed me in a direction of further education. And I got further lucky that the main school in my state is the school it is. It’s a school that is incredibly left-leaning and secular, and ultimately it pushed me extremely far outside my comfort zone.

I am extremely grateful for the opportunities that made it easier for me to get out of this situation, but I did still have to work for it. Here are my suggestions for surviving a cult-like environment and for eventually getting out:

Do everything you can to expose yourself to other ideas and beliefs. I assume that if you recognize you’re in this type of situation and want to escape, you already know that you disagree with the beliefs that are being forced on you at some level. But it’s important to further educate yourself where possible and figure out your beliefs. Figuring out what you believe and being committed to it is key in being able to stick to leaving your environment. If you know you disagree, but you can’t articulate why you disagree or what you believe and you aren’t committed to your beliefs, you will be very easy to convince that you are wrong and you will be very easy to manipulate. 

If you’re on tumblr reading this, you probably have access to the internet, so use that to your advantage. Research things, read articles, and involve yourself in discussions. If you struggle with internet access, you can read books, magazines, and newspapers at your local library and potentially even join clubs through your library or school. Not everything you learn has to be political or about religion. Reading and learning will broaden your horizons, give you concrete interests outside religion, encourage you to learn about things that make you uncomfortable, etc. 

If you are involved in a religion that has a text, read it critically and read nonreligious analyses of it. You don’t necessarily have to agree with these analyses, but thinking critically about the text you’ve been raised to take as complete fact will help you realize what you actually believe.

Find others who agree with you. In high school, I had a couple of friends at church who were “rebels” too, and we’re still friends to this day. We moved on together, and it really helped me be able to get out because I wasn’t doing it alone.

If you have to physically leave to get away, make sure you have enough money and have a backup plan. If you leave and are forced to come back for any reason, leaving again will be infinitely harder. If you leave, make sure it can be for good. It doesn’t necessarily have to be permanent, but if you come back it has to be on your own terms and not out of necessity.

Don’t get yourself kicked out and be safe no matter what.

Some resources I think are helpful:

Find an LGBT Center (US only) - LGBT centers are incredibly helpful for issues that go beyond being LGBT+, and if you’re eligible to use them they can be a great resource

The Trevor Project - LGBT+ resources and crisis lines

Tumblr post describing what to do if you’re homeless - It’s from Tumblr, so take it with a grain of salt, but it seems like pretty solid advice.

How to leave a cult - Very basic guide, but has some good advice.

Quiz to help you figure out your political beliefs (US based, but has some other countries as well) - I’d suggest taking this a few times as you develop your beliefs, and I’d also suggest clicking “more questions” as many times as possible in every category to ensure that you cover a broad range of topics.

How Ideology Colors Morality - about how morality frames US politics

Ethics - a good place to start when looking at different ways of analyzing ethics. My high school ethics class is a huge component in why I questioned my own beliefs. Ethics is an eye-opening topic.

List of all the religions - exploring different religions and belief systems helped open my mind to new ideas and ways of thinking about the world

If you want me to help you research something or find resources for a specific situation, feel free to message me or send me an ask and I’m happy to help (you can also ask me other questions, my asks and DMs are always open!)

And as always, if I made a mistake or linked a bad resource, please feel free to let me know so that I can correct the issue ASAP. I always try to do my research thoroughly, but things can slip by since I am but a human. Thank you!

#cptsdstudyblrreligion #cptsd #ptsd #trauma #religious trauma #religious abuse #religion #christianity #fundamentalism #ex fundamentalist #cult #ex cult #fundie #ex fundie #ex christian #christian

[mbti-notes]

Hi mbti-notes, I hope you're doing well. I am an INFP young black American and the past few weeks have been such a nightmare. I obviously support the protests that have been taking place but I feel so hopeless at the same time. I've never been a fan of this country but the past few weeks have at least provided me with more clarity and conviction that there is nothing to be salvaged here. I have a friend who's also black but lives in europe and even we're at a loss for what to say to each (con't)

[con’t: other. I feel so angry and disgusted. I remember learning that as a part of anti-US propaganda during the Cold War, they’d show how black people have been treated in America and be like “this is how they treat their own people”. I’m not saying I support the USSR of course but it surprised me to hear that in the eyes of other countries, we’re as American as anyone else. It never felt that way. People can’t even protest police brutality without being faced with more police brutality. I’ve donated to bail funds, signed petitions, contacted my representatives about a piece of legislation that would help combat the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women but...I think the closest thing there is to a solution is for another Great Migration but this time, we just leave America. I feel bad saying that because obviously so many people don’t have the means to do so and it shouldn’t have to come to this but nobody wants us here. If the black panthers...]

It seems that tumblr disappeared the rest of your message, but I've read enough to detect some problematic thinking. It’s not about whether you’re “wanted”, it’s about the fact that you have a right to exist and be treated as human, equal to every other human under the law. It is beyond the scope of this blog to address politics and write political commentary. This blog primarily addresses individuals and how they cope with their circumstances. I won’t be able to understand all the experiences that you’ve had as a black American given such a short message from you. All I can do is bring to light your attitude and beliefs and how they affect your ability to cope and thrive in life. 

Developmentally, irrational pessimism is always something that INFPs should be vigilant about due to Fi-Si loop and the struggle to develop Ne big-picture thinking skills. There is certainly lots of injustice in the world, but this doesn't mean that there isn't also a lot of good in the world. There are many good people out there doing good things, otherwise, you’d have nothing to donate money to. There are also a lot of decent people who understand that racism is a big problem but don’t know what to do about it. Yet your mind is only ever trained on the pain and suffering - this indicates Fi extremes. I have a longstanding habit of observing how different people respond to challenges in life. For example, I see some black Americans out there protesting, some are educating people, some are attacking people, some are sowing anarchy, some are running for office, some are giving up, some are hiding, some are writing, some are leading legislative initiatives. Black Americans as a group share the burden of racism, but each person handles it in their own way. What is your response and why?

You focus on the problems, drowning in negative feelings, and perhaps even look for evidence to reinforce the belief that everything is irredeemable (misuse of Si), which means that you lack a big picture perspective. For your own well-being, perhaps you need to make wiser decisions about how you spend your time, where you focus your energy, and with whom you associate. Otherwise, you are only ever a victim of circumstance, bending and breaking with every gust of wind. If there are things/people in your life that exacerbate your tendency to be negative, it's up to you to adjust your decision making so that you are not always surrounded by the negative. Just as you keep physically healthy by not eating crap food, you should keep mentally healthy by not feeding yourself a constant diet of emotional negativity. For example, people tend to be much more pessimistic when they spend too much time on social media or consuming political commentary that is designed to be emotionally provocative. Perhaps there are healthier ways to spend your time. Whether you followed this or that tweet is of little significance if it only ends up with you feeling miserable.

With respect to moving: There are a variety of methods to measure the health and well-being of a society, and it's natural to think about how your country stacks up against others. Different societies have their own character and excel at different things. However, it's important to remember that there is no society without problems. Some countries are better at hiding their problems than others. Europe is no paradise, as there have been long running problems with colonialist and xenophobic attitudes. American society tends to be very extraverted and media driven, so its problems are often hanging out there for all to see, which might make them seem a lot worse than they really are.

Each aspect of society, whether you think it is positive or negative, is the result of a trade-off. For example, people often respect the U.S. for its staunch commitment to free speech, which allows for marginalized voices to be heard. But the trade-off is that you may get a more noisy and toxic social environment, as all voices get elevated and amplified. The question for you, as an individual, is whether the trade-offs are worth it for the kind of life that you would like to live. With the example of free speech, I’d rather have free speech, so I’m willing to tolerate all the noise and accept it as the cost of doing business. Nobody can make these sorts of judgments for you, as you are the best person to decide what's best for you. Thus, I'm not sure what to tell you. I only remind people that the decision making process works best when you give proper consideration to EVERY side of an issue, as opposed to being myopic, extreme, or one-sided.

Right now, there is a lot of frustration and anger floating around. Being so emotional basically means being myopic, as you are hyperfocused on the things that make you sad or angry. This will blind you to everything else. When you lose sight of the positive, Ne might start to believe that the grass is greener elsewhere. There's no denying that the problem of racism against black people runs very deep in American society, all the way back to the founding of the nation on the backs of slaves. But are you denying that progress has been made?

When people use the word "progress" in relation to history, they mainly refer to how things changed for the better. I think people too often forget that progress almost always comes at a steep COST. Society doesn’t change because people miraculously get “enlightened” en mass. No. People suffer, things get mangled, blood is shed, and there is a period of intense pain and sacrifice - these details tend to get glossed over in history classes as hindsight and nostalgia take over. Creation and destruction are two sides of the same coin. Thinking that you can create something new and better without destroying what is old and obsolete is wishful thinking. To be clear, I'm not advocating destruction; I'm only saying that, in reality, you cannot escape destruction, as it is a necessary stage in the process of creation. If you are unlucky, you get to live during "interesting" times. But, viewed from a bigger perspective, it also means that you get to live during a time when you have a chance to make a difference and what you do matters. From this perspective, being alive right now is better than living during a time of being forced into accepting the status quo, is it not?

What is society other than the people comprising it? Societal problems are analogous to psychological problems in that they are deep-seated, long-running, festering, recurring, and difficult to resolve. I believe that there is a qualitative shift in attitude right now. It doesn't mean that racism will suddenly get fixed once and for all, but I've not seen such widespread attention and commitment to the problem in a long time. It actually gives me hope. I have older friends who've remarked that they suddenly feel transported back to the unrest of the 1960s. IMO, it means that another period of progress is on the horizon, but it also means that a time of intense turmoil is here. It seems that you focus on the turmoil and miss seeing the openings and opportunities for change.

Another thing that INFPs should always be vigilant about is a shaky relationship to reality and/or being unable to tackle problems in a realistic way (i.e. poor Ne and Te development). Reality contains everything, including the good and the bad, so it’s no use to try to pretend that one or the other doesn’t exist. You will always make better decisions by taking BOTH the good and the bad into consideration. Some INFPs get stuck in trying to wish away the bad, and some drown in the bad and disconnect from everything good. 

Just as a child picks up a mix of psychological issues from their parents, as a member of society, your identity is forged through your relationship to your society's (problematic) history. I don't see how a "great migration" is any solution. Don’t forget that technology has made our world significantly smaller, so it’s a lot harder to distance from these problems. As long as you carry the scars of your home, no matter where you go, unresolved pain will continue to haunt you and hurt you. There is historical evidence that utopian thinking never leads to anything resembling a utopia. Utopian thinking is what people resort to when they are incapable of confronting the problems of reality. When it comes to human psychology, there is no way to wipe the slate completely clean without confronting and addressing the mistakes and sins of the past - this is what social unrest is meant to achieve. To believe that you can/should “start from scratch” is often a sign of Te grip in INFPs, as they want to violently wipe out the accumulated burdens of Si loop. 

Perhaps there are benefits for you, as an individual, to move away, as you might find happiness in a different sort of life. But what happens when the advocates give up and walk off? At the societal level, good people moving away only leaves the bad actors to wreak havoc on the poor and innocent. Certainly, some individuals do move away and successfully build a better life for themselves. However, some people move away only to discover that they miss home dearly, and they end up roaming aimlessly, lonely, miserable, bitter, or disappointed. What separates the two groups? You will find a better life when you know exactly what you're looking for and you're realistic about whether the new place will meet those terms and conditions. You will NOT find a better life if you're merely running away from unhappiness, fueled by wishful thinking that the grass is greener "anywhere but here". It's up to you to be honest about what's happening with you.

#infp #si loop #te grip #politics #activism #pessimism #ask

[nissakii]

9 Romance Animes you should watch

Who doesn’t know the feeling when you have just finished a bunch of Shounen animes filled with action or maybe some sad movie you simply cannot get over with that easily,

and all of a sudden the thought comes up, “ah it’s about time to watch some romance again.”

For those of you who are searching for an anime to satisfy your maiden hearts, here are 9 romance animes you should probably watch when you are craving for those little candies in your life!

Kaguya love is war

Let’s start with a different kind of romance anime: Kaguya love is war!.

While the anime as well as the manga had received a lot of recognition and fanbase, there are still a lot of people who only know it for the memes (Fujiwara).

Despite it being another romcom Anime the fact that it’s built up in an interesting and strategic way. It doesn’t feel like a romance anime sometimes and even makes you feel if there is even a hint of that sappy love-story you might be craving.

But I can assure you, that anime will stir all kinds of emotions going from sad and tragic backstories that might let you shed a tear to laughter where you have to repeat one scene or another.

Next to the variety of characters that all have flaws, flaws and… even more flaws despite their good image at school, which makes them much more relatable and twisted that you might feel, finally not another perfect protag who gets all the girls/boys.

Because on both sides the mind games are on a high stack, yes mind games that’s the cue because Kaguya love is war is not a simple love story that plays in the most important years of highschool.

It’s a game of who will give in first, who weakens to succumb to their own feelings and confess to the other person, with all kinds of tricks and traps to get their ways.

Let’s not forget about external factors like other characters who put the whole strategy planned ahead to no avail and the funny ways of ridiculing some typical anime cliches.

With a lot of romance, psychology, humor and a hint of drama watching Kaguya love is war will be your out-of-the-ordinary romance anime that you surely don’t want to miss out.

Tonari no kaibutsu-kun

Tonari no kaibutsu-kun is an anime which might not be as known and especially the manga who was even better didn’t get as much recognition.

It’s not a new-generation anime but still one you might want to watch for a change of pace.

Another synonym for the anime is my little monster matching the male part of the main cast.

The two main characters are not your usual shy girl and popular guy, but a hard-working emotionless highschool girl with no friends due to the fact that she doesn’t care at all about her social life and enjoys studying to secure a big job later on.

On the other hand, we have the boy who is not shown at the beginning since he was suspended from the get-go getting into fights and being feared by others yet turns out to be a little bit socially-inept and misunderstood by those around him.

Due to a coincidence and some misunderstandings those two collide and it’s not like you think a super cute shoujo-anime moment, not at all rather the potrayment of social anxiety on the boy’s side and being dragged into a mess on the girl’s side.

To not tell you too much, the interesting thing about this anime is actually not the pairing (which of course is too but) the development of each character, even the side characters.

Because in this series everyone gets their deserved screen time and character development, showing big problems highschool girls and boys alike tend to have around their ages and the social stigma around f.e your typical popular girl or the sporty gets along with everyone guy from the class next door.

If you already watched this series, but haven't read the manga yet I can only recommend you to do so, the stories of each character are told in depth there and it goes beyond the anime revealing interesting facts and arcs that were not shown in the anime.

Kimi Ni Todoke

If you are a slow-burn romance fan like me, then Kimi Ni Todoke might be your next series to watch.

The title means “From me to you”, depicting the life of a female highschooler who gets misunderstood frequently by her peers as she looks like Sadako from the horror movie “The Ring”. As she is actually a very kind and optimistic soul her classmates and the people around her get too scared to even talk to her and start rumors that she is able to curse others. 

While the story goes on the girl starts to develop more and more, getting to know much more feelings and experiences through her classmates and the guy she admires.

It’s a lighthearted cute story with a lot of relatable issues that some of you might already have overcome or in midst of it.

Like the title says, the story focuses much more on the depiction of thoughts and feelings, how different the thoughts one person holds and it can or cannot reach another. Showing us the many sides of communication and trying to understand other people not by only relying on only what one thinks is the way to communicate but also adapt to the way others try to communicate, f.e shy characters who cannot always get their thoughts across.

It also revolves around how one perceives other people they have never engaged with and the main role of rumors and prejudices taking place in our society as well.

For some people this series may be a bit too long for a romance anime, having two seasons and a total of twenty-four episodes, but it’s worthwhile if you are interested in a more pure kind of romance that establishes slowly and step by step.

Akkun to Kanojo

Sometimes for a change of pace seeking something easy and quick to watch might help you to sweep that small moment of romance into your life.

Akkun to Kanojo is a short series consisting of 25 Episodes in total but each episode is 3 to 4 minutes long if you cut the opening out it’s even shorter.

Still the story that is told might make you smile from time to time, as you see the romance between a male tsundere and a cute childhood friend unfold.

The concept of the male being the tsundere is really funny and has a little twist as most animes, especially romance animes usually depict the woman/girl as a tsundere type of character in that cast.

The pure love the male part actually bears for the female one is very cute yet a bit frustrating at the same time just like he does feel when seen from his perspective.

Which makes it even cuter is that the female part knows him very well as she doesn’t really get bothered by his tsundere traits and just plays them off not minding him even insulting her since she knows he doesn’t mean it like that.

The guy on the other hand blames himself and even tells himself he cannot get near to such a pure and beautiful being, whenever she leaves right afterward.

A funny romance comedy that skips the drama and fills the day with smiles and cuteness.

Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun

Monthly Girls Nozaki-kun, one of the anime that makes you wonder which shipping you like the most but at the end leaves you behind since the romance aspect is always overshadowed by comedy.

And that is not a bad thing.

While the manga goes past the story told in the anime and even has some more romantic moments as well as crucial realizations, the anime gives the viewer a lot of content when it comes to diverse characters, funny moments, frustrating interruptions and even more.

At some points a lot of misunderstandings come up which I personally found so frustrating and hoped to finally get resolved, yet at the same time they had their own charm in pushing the story into another direction.

It’s a slice of life anime in the end which makes the story not too flashy, but the flashy characters compensate with the fact.

If you are searching for a romance anime where the comedy genre is heavily emphasized then this might be your next choice, since the anime is much more for laughter and enjoying the flow of character interactions and relationships than the actual romance as the focus point.

Honobono log

Another short series anime with only 12 Episodes this time and they are less than two minutes long. Still it’s a refreshing depiction of the many ways of love going from fighting couples to a heartbroken girl and a family.

The interesting style of art, the way how sounds and music are used, and the vibe in general just puts you at ease and let’s you enjoy the story with a light heart.

Especially after a hard day watching this short series feels like a wonderful way to slowly get into your deserved relaxation mood.

Ouran Highschool Host club

A classical one that most of you probably already watched and if not, then this is one of the animes you should really add to your list.

Ouran highschool host club could be viewed as one of the older animes that just rushes your mind back into a nostalgic mood, and the original story behind it still influences a lot of people outside.

It’s about a girl who dresses as a boy, not to be admitted or because she feels that way, no because she doesn’t care at all how she looks and how people perceive her making others mistake her for a boy.

She does not really intentionally make people view her that way, and events of coincidences caused her to get the final blow as she destroys a vase and is forced to join the host club of her school to pay it off.

Of course the leader of the club thinks she is a boy until he realizes the Fe before the male part is very present but he was too dense to realize it.

A story with a lot of character development, building  relationships, finding yourself and many other important topics starts from here on.

The many characters that represent the host club is what makes the series so charming and with the female lead not being your typical female protag as well.

As she is a very independent, cold and goal-oriented character who doesn’t care about romance at all yet has a natural charisma of her own.

A slow-paced romance anime with a lot of stories and derives from your usual storyline, a must watch for those of you who haven’t yet.

Kaichou wa Maid-sama

Another classic to add on your list with a feisty female lead and a funny teasing male lead who doesn’t seem to care for anything at all, beside teasing the student council president who is the female lead.

The student council president is known for being strict, not standing boys and doesn’t fear to speak her mind when she sees things going wrong at school, actively taking part that the school rules are being followed.

But her school is mostly filled with boys and undisciplined ones on top of that making her being feared for chewing each of them out with no remorse or hesitation.

There is a little problem though, when the handsome and cool male lead suddenly finds out that she is part-timing as a maid in a maid-cafe after school to support her family financially. And he doesn’t simply tell her secret, no it gets worse.

He visits her frequently, keeping the secret for himself and threatening her into hanging out with him or talking to him, even forcing her to be his maid at work.

An interesting development of storyline and plot, with two people coming from different backgrounds  and getting to know each other's real sides as they move forward towards a complex relationship.

Wotaku ni Koi wa Muzukashii

What is the best way to find love for an otaku? Fall in love with another otaku.

This romance comedy anime takes place in the world of work where the characters are all already older and mature than the usual highschool love setting.

As the female-lead switches workplaces in order to hide the fact she is a yaoi-fangirl and her secret passion for anime, she meets her handsome school friend again who is a video-game otaku.

Both of them go out for drinks and make fun of their situations being both different kinds of otakus, the sudden purpose of trying to date comes up and so a weird start of a relationship between two otakus takes place.

Additionally a lot of characters join the cast with different kinds of love stories of their own having one couple that constantly fights and doesn’t look like one at all, as well as side characters with their insecurities.

The everyday life of an otaku couple starts and we follow their story into the twists and fun of being in a relationship, as well as the insecurities and concerns that come with it.

A series for a different kind of romance that makes you wonder how different couples can be and the importance of accepting your true self.

Did you already watch any of this series?

Or do you think there is another must watch romance anime?

Drop it in the comments!

Well then let me now return to my lonely tea,

forever single Makii

Original Source

#Akkun to Kanojo #Kaguya love is war #kaguya sama wa kokurasetai #Kaichou wa Maid-sama #ohhc #ouran high school host club #gekkan shoujo nozaki kun #tonari no kaibutsu kun #my little monster #romance anime you should watch #9 Romance Animes you should watch #Honobono log #kimi ni todoke #wotakoi #wotaku ni koi wa muzukashii #anime #animes #shoujo #romance #nissakii #blog

[wiptw]

Sagebrush:  Exploring a Cult Compound

Sagebrush

PC – Redact Games – 2018

           Narratively driven exploration games, or ‘walking simulators’ as some corners of the internet will call them, are a fairly subjective branch of the classic Adventure Game genre. There’s a larger focus on the story being told, usually chopping out things like game mechanics and NPCs to focus entirely on guiding players through the story via notes, flashbacks, or other storytelling devices.  In other words, if a game like Super Mario Bros. is like a carnival shooting gallery, this is like the carnival dark ride; an on rails experience that only changes slightly (if at all) on repeat rides.

           Sagebrush is one such game, focusing on a mysterious player character exploring the abandoned “Black Sage Ranch”; a former cult compound based out of Arizona that recruited a number of people looking for meaning in their lives. Throughout the game you’ll explore the dirty, rotting remains of a compound looking for clues as to who was living here, what happened in the final days of the cult, and of course why you’re there in the first place.

                         Creepy colors lend to the creepy atmosphere

           Over the course of the game, you’ll find notes and tape recorders to learn more about the history and people who lived here; but more importantly they’ll let you know whether or not you’re in the right place.  

           Sagebrush focuses heavily on realism and grounded logic in order to immerse the player and make later twists in the game more shocking (which won’t be spoiled here).  So of course, this means no magic map marker but also that you need a light source to read or examine most objects in the dark.  For the most part, this works decently enough with an ambient soundtrack only ever occasionally interrupted by a musical sting or sound effect. Crickets chirping in the evening, wooden floors creaking and clunking beneath your feet, and your own sighs and breathing create a world that feels real, but empty.  

               Day to Night transitions help lend a bit of realism to the setting

           Adding to this, the notes are written from the perspective of various cultists.  These notes act as worldbuilding, but also point you in the direction for finding the next bit of major narrative; which is usually delivered through an audio recording.  

           Through these notes, you’ll learn secrets like the combination to the compound’s rectory, and where to find the items you’ll need to full explore Black Sage Ranch; but you’ll also discover the answer to questions you’ll likely have while exploring.  Questions like “why is there a bunch of cereal locked up in the farm shed” and “Whose pregnancy test is sticking out of the toilet?”

           The audio logs function similarly, providing you details while also pointing you to the next clue; but they also act as checkpoints.  Listening to an audio log locks you into a black and white version of whatever room you’re in, and saves your game after you’ve finished listening.  They’re less frequent than the notes, 12 audio logs in total are scattered throughout the ranch, but it’s clear that there was a lot of care put into the messages these logs delivered.

           That’s why it’s a shame I have to admit of the two, I preferred the notes. The audio logs often felt intrusive, although an end game spoiler explains that fairly decently, and all but a few of them are from the same point of view; which is delivered by someone with a very flat line delivery.  Not all of them were terrible, but there were at least three or four tapes where the director should’ve definitely asked for a different take.  

           Aside from the story though, the other main draw of this game and many others like it is the environment you’re exploring.  Black Sage Ranch is a large, empty, and menacing place that does an excellent job of building tension through looks alone.  From the rusty trailers everyone (except of course the cult leader) lives in, to the bloodstained exterior of the cleansing room, the ranch is painted in this sort of realistic horror; the kind where being there is less ‘creepy’ and more ‘uncomfortable’.

           The game uses pseudo-playstation graphics to give the game a retro vibe, but it doesn’t usually diminish from the surroundings.  Objects, textures, and videos in game might be a little muddy as a result, but you’ll never have any trouble knowing what’s what or what you’re supposed to be looking at, which means you’ll probably also not have any trouble with any of the games two puzzles.

           In most games of this type, the walking simulator variety, there’s usually very little else outside of walking and listening.  Games like Gone Home and Stanley Parable are known for making this sort of game more mainstream, and had very minimal mechanics attached to them; but in Sagebrush you’ll need to solve a number of small puzzles

           These puzzles all work the same, except for one; find the object you need to advance, then use said object.  So, for instance, you need to find a generator key in the first area to be able to use the light switches in the community building. You find the key, find the generator, then turn on the generator and the puzzle is done.  It never gets more advanced than this, and the only other puzzle involves simply finding the padlock combination on two different locks.  

           I don’t begrudge the devs for recycling a basic puzzle structure, I want to make that perfectly clear.  Game design is hard, and puzzle design is even harder, but after seeing the first few puzzles in the game it felt less like puzzles and more like chores before the game would let me have more story.  I don’t see a chained-up door and think “Oh, I wonder what I’ll use to get that open” or “Wow, I wonder what could possibly be in there”, I end up thinking “Oh, great.  I wonder when I’ll be allowed to go in there”.

                           Not helping is the fact most of the items are keys

           Even if you stumble on a puzzle or two though, it’s a very short game.  I beat the entire game in around an hour and a half; and most of that time was spent listening to audio logs.   It’s not the best narratively driven adventure you’ll play this year, and it’s not even the best from the year it was released, but at the very least it’s a fun distraction for an hour or two when you’ve got nothing better going on.  You can find copies on Steam and Itch.io, and as of writing this you can also get it as part of itch.io ‘s $5 game bundle; which I’d recommend since you get over a thousand other games and because the money will go towards a cause that really needs it at the moment.  

 Overall: 6/10

Sound: 8/10

Graphics: 7/10

Memorable Moments:  Finding the audio log in the chapel, and the cutscene that occurs during it

#First Post #Sagebrush #IndieGame #6/10 #PS1 graphics #itchio #review #wiptw #Toomanykeys #Atmospheric #cult #cult game #trauma

[prettygirlseat]

TW.

Guys for anyone who follows me with disordered eating habits, anyone who’s in recovery, or anyone who may be triggered by this, i want to first put out a warning. i will be talking about eating disorders, binging, food, calories, and other diet-related topics. please read at your own risk.

So. I finally watched Shane Dawson’s “The Return of Eugenia Cooney”, and... wow. First, I had never heard of her before his video; I may have seen pictures here and there on Tumblr or other sites but I never knew who she really was.

At first I was incredibly triggered, and within 3 minutes into the actual video, I had to pause it and catch my breath because I (not expecting to see what I was seeing) was not mentally prepared to watch a video like this. That being said, the video was very good, but that’s not why I’m making this post.

If you’ve been following me since BEFORE I was even in recover and I was a thinspo account, you’d know that, mentally, I was incredibly sick. I remember seeing one of my old posts a few months ago where I documented what I ate that day, and I only had eaten 500calories. At the darkest part of my eating disorder, which has yet to be professionally diagnosed (for reasons I’ll get into in a second), I struggled to eat, my hair would fall out in large clumps, I’d have bruises everywhere from lack of iron, my skin would be dry and flakey, and I would be cold in 80 degree weather.

I suffered from disordered eating habits my whole life. Blame it on partly my problem with certain foods (food aversion & sensory processing, which led me to eat a very little variety of foods), growing up poor and not being able to afford the luxury of some foods, my mom’s lack of knowledge about nutrition, and other mental factors like family life and other mental illnesses. However, things got progressively worse for me when I was in 7th grade (about 10 or 11 years old); that’s when I first noticed I was beginning to purposely eat less and less food OR I’d easily eat an entire tub of cheese balls in the span of 2 or 3 days.

When I got to high school, I started doing cheerleading, and this was a problem because cheerleading is the type of sport (yes sport, stfu) where certain things are dictated by your “size” aka how much you weigh. If you were lighter/smaller, you’d be a flyer, which meant you’d be the girl in the air. If you were heavier/bigger, you’d be the girls holding the flyer in the air, etc. Well, ever since I could remember, I wanted to be a flyer so bad, but I was never small enough. I wanted to be thin so that I could be the girl in the air. Not to mention the small uniforms with the tiny skirt and little top made it harder as well because I wanted to look good, I wanted to feel cute and “small” in my uniform.

When I turned 15, though, that’s when things peaked for me, in terms of my eating disorder’s severity. I had begun losing a lot of weight, I was in love with a boy at the time who didn’t love me back, and my sick brain convinced me that if I was thinner, maybe he’d like me. *spoiler alert: he didnt* So yeah, I was losing weight, going to the gym everyday, binge every few days, and I even created what I called a “thinspo” diary to keep track of what I was doing. AND. I made a thinspo account on Tumblr. hence how this account was originally born.

The more weight I started to lose, the more compliments I received, which motivated me to lose even more weight. However, by the time I was 17, I had met a girl that had just moved to my school and was a “friend of a friend”. She was also suffering from an eating disorder, and she was in the process of getting help. With her encouragement and the encouragement of recovery blogs on Tumblr and my own desire to escape the hell of my ED, I finally went into self-recovery (because, keep in mind, I had never been properly diagnosed by a doctor and since no one in my family knew what was going on).

Self-recovery, first off, was the hardest thing I’ve ever done (and still fight with every single day). If you or someone you know is in self-recovery give yourself/them some love and encouragement because truly I feel like no one understands how hard it is to pull yourself out of the pits of hell all on your own. With that being said, I was struggling for awhile with my recovery at this point. Now, fast forward to February 2018 (I was a senior in high school), I had caught the flu. Left me unable to hold down food or water for 2 days. I was sent to the hospital because I had thrown up 7 times in 10 hours, which doesn’t seem like a lot maybe but let me tell you that was the worst physical illness I had to endure, and I was sick for 2 weeks.

During these 2 weeks, I could eat maybe a sleeve of crackers and a can of coke if I was lucky. I was at a very low place mentally, and overall I was just miserable. I had been attempting recovery for a few months at this point, and I was seriously struggling. So, like any logical person would do, I tried to reach out to people for help. I decided it was finally time I come clean to my mom about my illness. I was laying in bed and I had gotten up to go talk to my mom, who was doing dishes in the kitchen. I walk up to her and, meekly (which is something I’m NOT in the slightest) tell her I might be sick with an eating disorder, and that I thought I needed help. She, who worked as an Emergency Room technician and had treated patients with stabbings and gun shot wounds, told me that 1. I was not thin enough to have an eating disorder (because technically I was at an average weight for my height) and 2. she knows me well enough to know when I’m sick and that I’m not actually sick.

As someone who struggles with any mental illness, but especially an eating disorder, all you want is someone to recognize you, validate you, and give you reassurance. In this moment, I knew I would never get any of those things from my mom about my illness. And this may sound dramatic to some people, but I think a part of myself died that night. Because that wasn’t the first time I had gone to my mother for help, and time and time again she had either outright denied my need for assistance or had said she’d get me help and just never did. And I still remember how devastated I felt in that moment, and I know there will permanently be rift in her and I’s relationship. It’s something I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive her for; when I was at the absolute worst and practically begging for someone to give a fuck, she turned her back on me and left me to basically fend for myself.

I’m finally happy to report, that as of July 2019, I am the happiest and most at peace I’ve ever been in my whole life. I’m recovering/recovered, I’m physically healthy, I have recently met some of the greatest people that are now in my life, and I finally feel like I got away from the grips of my ED. I’m not sure why I made this post, to be honest, but I’ve been struggling a little bit wit body dismorphia, positivity, self love, and everything else. After watching Shane Dawson’s video on Eugenia Cloony, it really put things into perspective of my own journey and how far I’ve come and how genuinely happy I am. I, like every other person on the planet, have many things I could improve upon, but I am so proud of where I am now. Shane’s video was triggering, but I needed to watch it to remind myself that: 1. I don’t want to die 2. I don’t want to be skeletal 3. I don’t want the people around me to fear for my life 4. I want to enjoy life, enjoy food, and just be happy 5. I am so much more than this body. I have passions, dreams, fears, goals, just like any other person.

If you think you can handle it, I recommend watching Shane’s video because it does shed a little light into the mind of someone with an eating disorder and how they can twist your life and perception. If you read all the way through this, thank you so much. Maybe this helped you, I’m not sure. But I’m glad I have this outlet to share my feelings and personal accounts, if for nothing else, than to just get these feelings off my chest; I don’t even care if no one reads this. But anyway, please know that my messages are always open if you’re struggling or you wanna talk or you need advice or even you just wanna send memes and gifs. I hope you all have a wonderful rest of your day.

#personal #me #tw death #tw thinspo #tw eating disorders #food tw #food #tw calories #calories #recovery #shane dawson #eugenia cooney #binge tw #tw body image #tw body dysmorphia #tw weight #tw hospital

[ddanadeai]

<181028 Legal court grilling ensues>

Yunho: It depends on the person...?

“Yunho answers with Solomon's wisdom towards these difficult questions aiming to compare🤗”

 “When a Tohoshinki member on Gyuretso was asked about the difference between Japanese and Korean, the answer ‘That is different with every person/it depends on the person’ is good. It was taken as a light gag, but I think all the answers were that one. I'm very impressed on the part where he didn't categorize, saying ‘They're Japanese, so blahblah. They're Korean, so blahblah.’ "

"Aren't Yunho's variety skills strong? He's more amazing that Japanese people 【It's different for every person/It depends on the person】"

“A SM Insider Talks About DBSK Members:

Jung Yunho: A perfect socialite, he handles social scenes very well, not only it’s due to extensive training from SM, but also has a lot to do with his personality and his family surrounding. Yunho’s very well rounded, and he knows what to say and what to do at places, even when he absolutely has to criticize someone, he does in a low-down way that it’s not dramatic.”

The father of U-Know Yunho gave an interview to a Japanese reporter several years ago. It was a revealing one:

Yunho is fiercely protective of his family and is fiercely private. Such an interview is rare but more importantly, it provided a lot of insights about the man we know mostly as the leader of the most successful boyband to ever come out of Korea. We know a few other things about him, mostly based on the stories from other people.We know he has strict work ethics. We know he is dedicated to his work. We know he is loyal. We know he is protective of the people he loves. We know he has class.

This interview will partly explain how he became the man he is now and give new insights that will make us all realize just how rare of a breed U-Know Yunho is nowadays. This article is not for long-time fans of DBSK or U-Know Yunho but for new fans, non-fans or “passive” fans. However, the analysis still might be able to shed some new insights for everyone.

#1- Nothing Comes for Free

Yunho came from a smart family. They are all successful in their careers and all of them are self-made. Whatever they have, they worked for it on their own. That’s why Yunho’s learned how to plan for the future and value what they have. He knew that at the end of the day, they cannot count on anyone else to help them. It was the same value his father wanted Yunho to learn. Barely into the first grade, Yunho’s father told Yunho that he will have to earn half his allowance by doing household work. One of Yunho’s regular tasks is shining and cleaning his father’s shoes. After several months, he told Yunho to earn half his allowance outside the house. He had to look for a job, a real one. Now, let’s just put everything in perspective here. Yunho was an elementary kid. At an early age, Yunho’s father wanted him to understand that although he is loved, that love doesn’t grant him automatic privileges. Being born in the family automatically grants him love but it does not automatically make him a privileged prince. He needs to earn and prove his worth, not to the family but to himself, the way every man in his family has done.

#2- Know Your Purpose

Yunho comes from a family of prosecutors. In fact, that’s what his father wanted him to become. At an early age, whenever Yunho wanted something that is not a necessity, Yunho had to “defend” it with reason and convince his father why he must have it. When Yunho told his father he wanted to join a dance competition, he was asked to explain in detail why he just had to join the competition. When he won and decided to go to Seoul to join another competition, he had to defend it again. More than that, Yunho’s father trained him to understand his own desires before he does something. That way, he can make better decisions because it is not just about the what but more importantly, the why.

#3- Yunho’s Maturity at a Young Age

When Yunho’s father lost his job, the family didn’t experience financial ruin because he was able to save some money for rainy day. However, Yunho realized two important things, that the savings won’t last forever and everyone in the family need to contribute. Yunho did say that he knew his parents were protecting him and his sister from the burden of his father losing his job when his father took manual jobs to continue supporting the family even if he was a vice president in his previous job. Yunho didn’t want to burden his family with expenses that are not necessary. So much so that he started helping in the expenses of his sister’s education. Yunho didn’t completely put his sister through school but he shouldered the expenses that will allow his sister to continue experiencing normal, memorable and valuable high school activities such as field trips.

#4- Yunho Was Raised Knowing the Value of His Word

Yunho is open about the fact that his father was never in favor of his dreams to become a singer. His father wanted him to become a lawyer like many of the men in his family. When Yunho told his father he wanted to train under SM, his father gave him his blessings but with strict conditions. Those conditions were set to make Yunho return to Gwangju and pursue being a lawyer. Yunho’s father didn’t give him any financial support and the moment his father learns it is becoming hard for Yunho, he must return to Gwangju. It was a gentleman’s deal. Yunho had to work multiple jobs just to finance his training that he ended up sleeping in train stations because he couldn’t even afford to pay rent. The question is why did his father not learn about it? The answer is simple, Yunho never told him. His deal was his father was that he will return to Gwangju the moment his father learns it was becoming hard for him. His father counted on the fact that Yunho is good for his word. He will tell him the moment it becomes hard on him. And Yunho was good for his word. Yunho was pursuing his dream and for him, skipping meals and sleeping in train stations were all part of the training, the price he had to pay to achieve his dreams. It was not hard. It was mere consequences of his actions.

#5- His Father Never Forsook Him

His father was against his dreams and he did everything he could to get Yunho back to Gwangju to study law but he never forsook him. He simply didn’t know that Yunho was going through the things he was going through. His father said that had Yunho asked for financial support while training for SM, he would have given him money but Yunho never asked. He never cried. He never complained. Yunho knew he was doing something his father never wanted him to do. He should learn how to face the consequences of his own action, pay the price of his dreams.

Q: Who is a superstar to you?

Yunho: My father, whom I respect the most. He has wonderfully kept family, friends and work. A man’s man! [Q&A in Japanese magazine JJ, November 2011]

“Yunho kept saying ‘It depends on person’ on Gyoretsu no dekiru Houritsu soundansho tv show. So funny 😂😂😂 It was brilliant! they should be on more variety shows!”

“Non-fan’s tweet: Yunho answered ‘It depends on the person’ every time he was asked what the difference is between Korea and Japan. It was so deep and meaningful. It doesn’t matter, does it? I feel I understand why THSK is so popular in Japan as well. at any rate, they’re so HOT.”

"Tohoshinki is unbelievably good in Japanese... Amazing..."

"I don't know much about their activities after they became a duo, but Tohoshinki are cool. The words "neat looks" fit them really well. They're good in Japanese, and the atmosphere around these people are somehow different-"

#yunho #tvxq #changmin #tohoshinki #jung yunho

[robertbassweb]

Life Path Number 1 Meaning in Numerology

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What is Life Path Number 1?

What is the life path number 1 meaning in numerology?

The Life Path number, additionally referred to as the “destiny number,” is the number that results from the numerological reduction of your date of birth.

It provides understanding about the core of your individuality, as well as will additionally give you a higher understanding of the path to success in your life.

If your Life Path number is 1, you are a tough employee, an enthusiastic leader, as well as– at the same time– an innovative as well as imaginative soul.

It’s not always a mix that individuals expect, yet it’s the combination of your difficult work as well as your imagination that make you most likely to prosper in life.

Life Path, or fate number 1 is the path of the fantastic leader, and you allow absolutely nothing to separate yourself and also your objectives (which are generally pretty lofty).

You are extremely driven, typically functioning long hours or tossing a great deal of added effort right into any kind of task you consider worthwhile of your focus.

You’re an all-natural at working on your own, which is why lots of primary are drawn to entrepreneurial tasks or freelance work. It’s the ideal combination of self-motivation as well as flexibility from having a boss breathing down your neck.

You’re a really thinker, as well as wonderful at the kind of association of ideas that has various other people slapping their temples as well as claiming “why didn’t I consider that?”

This makes you an extraordinary leader in all sorts of endeavors. You march to the beat of your own drum, and are not afraid to strongly go where no other number has preceded.

These are all wonderful positives! Yet, obviously, no person is ideal– not even the most driven and also self-assured individuals on the planet. The negative side of leading is that you can be really egotistical.

Due to the fact that you’re so driven by success, you rapidly come to be distressed with people that you perceive as not functioning hard enough. You also have trouble asking individuals for help, or taking orders.

It can be a challenge for individuals with Life Path 1 to come to an adequate balance in between their passionate desire for success, and also their propensity in the direction of being self-centred or big-headed.

Having self-centred personality type is not a great means to make good friends, and also as we all understand, making pals is just one of the secrets to success in life.

Using numerology, individuals on Life Path 1 can come to have a better, a lot more rounded understanding of their very own natural personality type as well as impulses, and also by discovering regarding these, can find the best means to use them to find success and also accomplish their objectives.

By unlocking the course meaning of Life Path 1, as well as pertaining to a fuller understanding of just how it influences your expectation on life, you can use the positive factors of the Very first path to your advantage, and discover ways to stay clear of coming to be entrapped by the adverse parts.

  Life Path Number 1 in Love, Relationships and Romance

Life Path 1 likes to be accountable, as well as usually favors to be the one making choices in a connection. Since of this, they can have problems when getting in connections with other individuals who have the very same life path number, or who are otherwise exceptionally independent.

When you have a hard time in a partnership, it’s usually due to the fact that you’re having problem concerning effective compromises.

Whether that’s due to the fact that your wishes and also your partner’s are simply also much apart and also you’re having trouble resolving them, or even if one or both of you do not know exactly how to chat your means to a compromise, it can be a challenge.

Getting in a relationship with an other 1 can be particularly hard. You will naturally be drawn to their interest as well as personal appeal, yet struggle to resolve both of your needs for management duties.

If your goals are continually straightened, you’ll do terrific, but it’s quite complicated to find 2 individuals whose objectives are constantly directing parallel.

It does, nevertheless, make you a fantastic companion for quieter folks, due to the fact that you are superb at assisting bring them out of their shells.

It is necessary that you do not get involved in a pattern of discussing them, or allow their quietness to show to you that they don’t have any kind of opinions of their own, but often they’ll be happy to allow you take cost.

You are most compatible with people whose Life Path numbers are 3, 5, and 6, as their vibrant as well as versatile individualities enable them to hit it off with even the strictest as well as most “Type-A” 1. 3 is an unwinded and also happy-go-lucky type that infuses some humour right into your life; 5 is an adventurer who will certainly motivate you to extend your limits while allowing you to remain in fee; and also caring 6 is the best enhance to your hard design.

You’re likewise a true charming deep in your heart, and being coupled with someone that uses their heart a lot more on their sleeves can help bring that side of you right into the light.

You might have a great deal of barriers up around your heart, yet they can be conveniently dismantled with a light touch.

Your determination is just one of your biggest assets in a partnership. Also in moments of doubt, you are established to do whatever in your power and also more in order to make your relationship successful.

You have no agitations about making your companion your number one priority, assuming that you’ve decided they’re worth it.

You’re not scared to go down every little thing to find to your partner’s rescue. In some ways, you are a true knight in radiating armour, as well as you will certainly gather a large amount of respect and also admiration due to the fact that of this.

You approach your relationships with the very same grit with which you come close to whatever else in life, as well as they profit immensely from it.

In order to accomplish romantic success, you should exercise permitting other individuals to have a lot more control power.

By creating a more balanced strategy to that carries authority, you can constantly develop more powerful as well as much healthier bonds with others.

A note: Bear in mind, as constantly, that numerological compatibility is not an alternative to the “human element” that makes everyone special.

If it were as easy as compatible destiny numbers, you might too be the exact very same individual as any person born upon the exact same day! Always take individual variants right into account.

    Life Path Number 1 in Careers and Business

In numerology 1 is a great sign of company success as a result of your amazing drive. That tough job is extremely helpful to work environments, and also can swiftly lead you to success in whatever area you pick.

Because ones so willingly throw themselves, 110%, right into their work, and so rapidly climb up the rankings of their chosen profession, it is vital that you pick job that you find personally significant in some means.

If you don’t, you run the danger of shedding yourself out in that initial sprint to the top, obtaining bored when you reach your goals, and afterwards dropping it completely.

1 is not generally a number that takes orders well.

This is a problem when working under an overly complicatedor stringent class structure, or for a micromanaging boss (and have not we all needed to help at least one of those?)

You desire to be able to ask concerns, and also have the autonomy to do your task openly, and also both inflexible systems and also rigid people impair that.

You do not bring much all-natural regard for authority, thinking that they (like everybody else) need to earn your adoration for their suggestions and also behavior, as opposed to automatically having it through their placement.

Due to this, 1 often battles in the work environment and butts heads with managers who don’t take this sight.

An additional issue you might have is the sensation of futility that features any task where pay is based on time, as opposed to results.

What’s the usage of all your hard work, if you’re only going to be “penalized” with more work so that you can remain in the workplace for the exact same variety of hrs?

South Oriental teacher, author, as well as multi-millionaire supervisor of a “mentor realm” Andrew Kim stated, of his job, “the harder I work, the even more [money] I make. I such as that.”

That’s a perspective that all individuals with a Life Course 1 can jump on board with!

Regrettably, that’s not how a great deal of jobs function, which can be very irritating. It’s all-natural that you would certainly want your unbelievable inspiration to have some kind of material payback, and also really feel unfulfilled or perhaps mistreated when it doesn’t.

Because of this, numerous 1s are drawn to entrepreneurship or self-employment. You are most fulfilled when you are rewarded for completed tasks.

In this way, the more tasks you full, the more incentives you obtain. It likewise offers you a whole lot more flexibility to decide when to service what.

As well as it opens you up for traveling much more conveniently, which is something many– though not all– ones enjoy!

Do not feel as if you need to go into a “conventional” occupation simply since individuals have actually told you you’ll achieve success in it.

The reality is, you have the chops to be successful in simply about anything, from medicine or legislation to composing or filmmaking. If any person can prosper in tight industries, it’s you!

You just need to choose what it is you wish to do, after that begin utilizing your amazing energy resources to find out what you require to do to prosper in that market, after that do it. Yes, it truly is that simple!

Discovering Fulfillment on Life Path Number 1

1’s numerology informs you to seek your own path as a leader, a leader, and also a chooser of your very own fate.

You will certainly find a lot of satisfaction when going after something that rate of interests you, at a rate you choose, with results that please you. This goes for work, pleasure, even relationships.

It is vital that you discover just how to let this address times, since it’s simply not feasible to live life similar to this one hundred percent of the moment.

There requires to be some give-and-take– possibly you can quit a bit of control in your work to ensure that you can have downtime to pursue your other rate of interests, or possibly you can quit a little bit of control in your connection because you love your companion and also desire them to be pleased.

On the other hand, you will be the very least satisfied when you feel that you are being artificially limited. The feelingthat you are just adhering to orders– particularly orders that have no useful reasoning behind them– is abhorrent to you.

You are not terrified to ask “why?” when a person offers you an order that does not seem to make feeling, and also if the individual you’re asking can not provide you a great solution, all regard for their order is immediately lost.

You might or may not load it out, but if you do, it lacks any of your natural passion, and with expanding uncertainty for the person’s authority.

Lots of ones had a hard time in institution as a result of all these fabricated restrictions.

You were intense, yet may not have actually been the best-behaved, and also there’s an extremely likelihood that you didn’t placed in nearly as much effort as you can have.After all, primarily every little thing concerning the restraints positioned on trainees in school is fabricated.

In your adult life, your abhorrence for synthetic constraints has simply as much of a result in your connections, or in the work environment. You have no time for playing mind games with your prospective companions, and even less to taking crap from managers.

Any regulation or restriction that you can not locate any kind of kind of logical, practical, or even psychologically beneficial purpose for goes right gone.

This can create problems, however it can likewise be a very positive thing. Everything depends upon exactly how you set up your life. You require to make selections that sustain your individuality, as opposed to running unlike it.

Style your life so that your distinctiveness is a property, not an obligation.

There are always methods to alter your current way of life to make sure that it fits better with what you truly want on the planet. If you’re feeling unfinished, make changes today!

For example, there are a great deal of tasks where adhering to orders and respecting authority is essential, yet likewise a whole lot where it’s not, and also you’re much likelier to be pleased, total, in among those jobs.

This is not to state that no 1 has actually every enjoyed in a task where they take orders, but the compatibility as well as satisfaction with that kind of work is lower, in general, among ones.

Likewise, there are a great deal of companions who will wish to take cost, yet additionally a lot who will certainly be happy to allow you do the leading.

Again, there’s no reason for you not to put your energy and time into among those, rather than funnelling it into attempting to flex a person who clearly doesn’t intend to be bent to your will.

Finally, you need to make use of your nose for chances. You very rapidly recognize gaps on the market, areas where innovation is required, or originalities that require to be explored.

Not only can you recognize these gaps, yet you have a good deal of ability for finding out methods to load them.

By leaping on these opportunities, you can promote a sense of selection and also modification in your life, which can help buoy you via several of the drier, more repetitive, much less autonomous stretches that every life has every now and then.

  Last Thoughts

The numerology interpretation of 1 highlights your distinctiveness, your management, and also your job ethic. These are all amazing qualities, and highly compensated by culture if (as well as unfortunately just if) you know exactly how to effectively utilize them.

If you use them to construct a really fulfilling and significant profession, where you have freedom and a sense of effect, and to build a healthy relationship, where you can take cost without stomping around your partner, as well as you’re predestined for a life of perpetual success.

Your skills will certainly be valued, as well as you will enjoy their rewards.

On the other hand, if you require yourself right into jobs where you require to take orders that you don’t rely on, or try to date individuals who have individualities that are simply as strong as yours without sharing your goals, as well as you might locate that the old phrase is real, which “one is the loneliest number.”

Recognizing the number 1’s definition can aid you establish a way of life that is more constant with your individual, internal needs and objectives.

By recognizing a few of the tendencies– also the mistakes– of 1, you can stay clear of the adverse ones, as well as remain on track with the favorable ones, causing an all-round and highly effective total life experience.

Can you feel the power of your Life Course number 1? Are you a steadfast worker with a strong independent streak? Do you sometimes battle to integrate your need for success with your need for freedom?

How will you harness your destiny number’s natural power to accomplish your goals and reach your dreams?

Please such as this post if you located it beneficial or delightful. Share it to share the suggestions consisted of here with other individuals who share your Life Path number!

    Life Path Numbers FAQ

What does No 1 mean in numerology?

The number 1 is one of the 9 root numbers from which all numbers other than the master numbers derive their meanings. In numerology, the characteristics of 1 that are most stressed include independence, self-sufficiency and self-determination.

What life path number is compatible with 1?

If your life path number is 1, then you are going to be most compatible with life path numbers 3, 5 and 6. Number 1's can sometimes be a little bossy and opinionated. 3 and 5 can put up with this sort of character as they have traits that can help them deal with this easier.

Is the number 1 lucky?

People with the lucky number 1 are independent, ambitious, and creative as well as a little self-centered. As they are so independent, they tend to ignore the feelings of others

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  The post Life Path Number 1 Meaning in Numerology appeared first on Manifestation Matters.

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[artofmemoriesbrooklyn]

Toyin Ojih Odutolah Written by Neyssa Pierre

         Toyin Ojih odutola is a Nigerian immigrant, who came here at a very young age. While adjusting to her environment she faced confusion from her peers, who simply were not used to her culture. During that time she felt isolated and her mother became concerned and purchased her a lion king coloring book. From there she continuously recreated the image of  Timon, which sparked her interest in fine arts. From there she has created images that attribute to aid her in exploring the complexities and malleability of identity. Through her distinctive style of mark-making, she creates a new genre for the traditions of portraiture. Her work consists of rendered life -size charcoal, pastel, and pencil figures. That appears to have a sense of mystery in these figures, as they are against opulent domiciliary and leisure. These figures carry a narrative that has a range of art history along with  migration and dislocation. 

Whether its palette or skin she examines delineation, and variety. Her contemporary artwork shed light on the socio political construct of skin color, that has been a fundamental issue in society. In her drawings she depicts black bodies with textured completions that usually aren’t perceived as skin. In order to combat the issue on what skin color truly means in the black community. Her experience of being isolated for her culture and skin color amongst the black community influenced this. In having these very particular depictions of skin texture it forces the viewer to look closer in order to reveal the complexities of skin. In society we need to acknowledge that being ‘black’ isn’t constricted in just one shade, it varies in culture. In doing so she was able to find her identity in creating these different pieces.

The piece that I will be focusing on is the guilt of looking, which is created on a blackboard. This shows that the origin of all colors come from black, in societal aspects, this is the reality as we are the first people.The use of white graphite to construct a rendered image of a young boy.  Which has this inverted nature in removing the concept of race. Which is evident in her other pieces of her recreating white figures with dark skin completions and white hair. There is a lot of use of tone, density in allowing the viewer to see beyond the flesh, beyond what society has engraved in them to see a black body as. The pieces done in white pastel were meant to “make whiteness strange to itself,” and Odotula blossomed with excitement, nodding her head repeatedly and saying “Yes, yes, yes.” The act of making white strange to itself is quite interesting, as historically we in the black diaspora have been trained to be estranged to their own skin. In changing the perspective the use of feathery textures, and the white graphite play a huge role in doing this. Toyin creates conversations about the central component is the marks that are made to delineate and create singularities within an image. I wanted to see how far I could push this style or language I have been working with for the last ten years into something that eluded even myself. How far could I push it to create something “Other” that felt simultaneously familiar?

[frmartinshomiliesandreflections]

28th May >> Fr. Martin’s Gospel Reflections / Homilies on John 16:5-11 for Tuesday, Sixth Week of Easter: ‘I am going to the one who sent me’.

Tuesday, Sixth Week of Easter

Gospel (Europe, Africa, New Zealand, Australia & Canada)

John 16:5-11

Unless I go, the Advocate will not come to you

Jesus said to his disciples:

‘Now I am going to the one who sent me.

Not one of you has asked, “Where are you going?”

Yet you are sad at heart because I have told you this.

Still, I must tell you the truth:

it is for your own good that I am going

because unless I go,

the Advocate will not come to you;

but if I do go,

I will send him to you.

And when he comes,

he will show the world how wrong it was,

about sin,

and about who was in the right,

and about judgement:

about sin: proved by their refusal to believe in me;

about who was in the right: proved by my going to the Father and your seeing me no more;

about judgement: proved by the prince of this world being already condemned.’

Gospel (USA)

John 16:5-11

For if I do not go, the Advocate will not come to you.

Jesus said to his disciples: “Now I am going to the one who sent me, and not one of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ But because I told you this, grief has filled your hearts. But I tell you the truth, it is better for you that I go. For if I do not go, the Advocate will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes he will convict the world in regard to sin and righteousness and condemnation: sin, because they do not believe in me; righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will no longer see me; condemnation, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.”

Reflections (7) 

(i) Tuesday, Sixth Week of Easter

In the Acts of the Apostles, Paul preaches the gospel in a whole variety of situations and places. In today’s gospel reading, he preaches the gospel in prison to his jailer and the jailer’s family. We are being reminded that there is no place or situation in which the gospel can’t be preached. The jailer and his family responded to Paul’s preaching of the gospel and were baptized and received into the church. Immediately, the jailer gave something back to Paul. Having received the wonderful gift of the gospel and of faith, he washed Paul’s wounds and then, with his family, he showed hospitality to Paul and his companions. Having freely received from the Lord through Paul, he freely gave to Paul. We have all been greatly graced by the Lord, and we are called to give generously from what we have received. This pattern of people receiving the gospel and then giving from what they received is frequently found in the Acts of the Apostles. It is the pattern of the Christian life. In the gospel reading, Jesus speaks about the gift of the Holy Spirit he will give beyond his death and resurrection, a gift we are invited to receive. We have all received this gift of the Spirit and we are called to give from what we have received, to live in accordance with the Spirit we have received.  The Lord giving and our receiving, and our giving from what we have received is to be the shape of our lives.

And/Or

(ii) Tuesday, Sixth Week of Easter

In this morning’s gospel reading, Jesus, on the night before he died, addresses himself to the sadness of the disciples. They are sad because they have heard him talk about going away. On this evening, full of foreboding, they sense that he is referring to his imminent death. We always experience sadness when someone who has been significant for us, someone we have loved and valued, is taken from us in death. We need to grieve the loss of our loved ones. Yet, Jesus wants to bring some light into the sadness, the darkness of spirit, of his disciples. He does so by assuring them that, in going from them, he will be able to do something for them that he would not otherwise be able to do. In returning to the Father, he will be able to send them the Advocate, the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit. In and through this Spirit, Jesus will be present to his disciples in a new and very intimate way, and he will be present in this manner not just to his disciples gathered with him that evening but to all future disciples, including ourselves gathered here this morning. Jesus’ death and his resurrection from the dead leads to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon us all, and, in and through the Spirit, Jesus is within us and among us. That same Spirit is with us in all our dark and difficult times, in all our times of painful loss. The Spirit assures us of the Lord’s loving presence at such moments, so that even in our sadness we can experience something of that joy which is the fruit of the Spirit.

And/Or

(iii) Tuesday, Sixth Week of Easter

In the gospel reading this morning, Jesus tells the disciples that when the Advocate, the Holy Spirit comes, he will show the world how wrong it was about sin, about who was in the right and about judgement. Those who were responsible for the death of Jesus concluded that Jesus must have been a sinner to have died in the way he did; his ignominious death showed that God had judged him. Therefore, those responsible for Jesus’ death thought that they were right to put this sinner to death. Jesus declares that the Holy Spirit will demonstrate that this unbelieving world is totally wrong in these assessments. Jesus was not a sinner; he was not judged by God; those who put him to death were not in the right. We see here the enormous disparity between God’s perception and human perception. The one whom God looked upon as a beloved Son, others looked upon as a sinner. The one whom vindicated was considered judged or condemned by God. Those who saw themselves as in the right were judged by God to be completely in the wrong. Our perspective can be very wide of the mark. We need to keep growing into God’s perspective, to see as God sees, to judge as God judges. It is the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, who gives us God’s perspective. It is the Holy Spirit who enables us to see as God sees, to know as God knows, to understand as God understands, to be wise in the way God is wise. That is why we desperately need the Holy Spirit to keep filling our hearts and our minds afresh.  

And/Or

(iv) Tuesday, Sixth Week of Easter

In the gospel reading this morning, Jesus describes his disciples as ‘sad at heart’ because he had told them that he was going back to the one who sent him, God the Father. There are times in all our lives when we are ‘sad at heart’ for various reasons. Like the sadness of the disciples, our sadness too can be related to some experience of loss, the loss of someone who has been significant for us. Jesus understood the sadness of his disciples, yet, he wanted to show them that his leaving them had a value; it would open up his coming to them in a new and different way. He would come back to them in and through the coming of the Advocate, the Holy Spirit. In many respects, this second coming of Jesus would be more life-giving than his first coming. In and through the Spirit, the Lord would come to believers of every generation in every part of the world, to us here in Clontarf this morning. The disciples were experiencing a necessary loss, a loss that was in the service of a greater blessing. Many of our losses have the potential to be in the service of a greater blessing if we work through them with the help of the Holy Spirit whom the risen Lord sends to us. 

And/Or

(v) Tuesday of Sixth Week of Easter

In the gospel reading Jesus declares that when the Advocate comes he will prove the world wrong about sin, about who was in the right, and about judgement. Those responsible for having Jesus crucified presumed that he was the sinner, the breaker of God’s law, and that they, the defenders of God’s law,were in the right; they also presumed that Jesus’ crucifixion demonstrated God had judged him, condemned him. The Holy Spirit at work among the disciples would demonstrate, however, that Jesus was in the right, having been vindicated by God beyond death, and those who crucified him were the sinners, having rejected God’s only Son. Human estimations as to who is in tune with God and who is a sinner can be wide of the mark. Left to our own devices, we can so easily get things wrong. We need the Holy Spirit to enlighten us, to teach us, to help us see things from God’s perspective and not just our own. Sometimes what the Spirit tries to show us is something we don’t really want to see. We make our judgements, and we tend to hold on to them. Yet, we need to listen to what the Spirit may be saying to us. We need the deeper picture that only the Holy Spirit can give us.  

And/Or

(vi) Tuesday, Sixth Week of Easter 

In this morning’s gospel reading, Jesus explains to his disciples that his leaving them will ultimately be to their advantage. Although they will experience a great loss at no longer being able to see Jesus’ bodily presence, this loss will make possible a greater good. In going back to the Father, Jesus will send the Holy Spirit and through the Spirit he will be present in a new way to his disciples and to disciples of every generation. The experience of loss will be life-giving because Jesus’ going away will result in a new coming. Jesus’ departure is a necessary loss if God’s purposes are to be realized. It is often the way in life that we find ourselves having to deal with certain necessary losses, losses that are unavoidable and that are somehow part of God’s purpose for our lives. At the time, such losses can be very painful, but over time we can begin to see some new life emerging out of the loss. The going away that the loss entails can often give way to a new coming, a new birth, new life. The gospel reading this morning invites us to trust that the Lord can and will bring good out of the losses we have to suffer in the course of our lives. 

And/Or

(vii) Tuesday, Sixth Week of Easter

Departures can be sad affairs. Many are the tears that are shed at airports. The most difficult of all departures is the death of a loved one and that particular experience of departure brings its own very particular form of sadness. In the gospel reading this morning Jesus acknowledges the sadness of his disciples because of his imminent departure. ‘You are sad at heart’, Jesus said to them. They are sad because Jesus had been saying, ‘I am going to the one who sent me’. On the evening before Jesus was crucified, the disciples were aware that Jesus was taking his leave of them and sadness filled their hearts. Yet, Jesus wants his disciples to see that his departure is not the tragedy it appears to be; it contains within it the seeds of new life. It is only his departure that makes it possible for him to send the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, to his disciples, and it is in and through the Spirit that Jesus can be present to them in a new way. To that extent, as Jesus says to them, ‘it is for your own good that I am going’. In our own day to day experience the pain of letting go can be the birth pangs of a new and fuller life. As we face into our own necessary losses, we will experience the Lord’s coming in new ways.

Fr. Martin Hogan, Saint John the Baptist Parish, Clontarf, Dublin, D03 AO62, Ireland.

Email: [email protected] or  [email protected]

Parish Website: www.stjohnsclontarf.ie  Please join us via our webcam.

Twitter: @SJtBClontarfRC.

Facebook: St John the Baptist RC Parish, Clontarf.

Tumblr: Saint John the Baptist Parish, Clontarf, Dublin.

[pastor-matt]

Growing With Book Review

     Over the first eleven years of my ministry career, I served in a variety of churches as a youth pastor.  During this time I was oftentimes confronted with a variety of issues, however the one that stood out the most to me were parents that were desperate for assistance.  These parents desired for their children to grow, succeed, and most importantly love god, however as they attempted to navigate this journey they often felt as though they were taking two steps backward for every step forward.  As I struggled to understand their challenges I leaned heavily on the experience of wise leaders who were further along in their parenting journey.

     As I have continued in ministry as a lead pastor I am aways looking for worthwhile contributions to assist our members and community with the challenges they face.  Parenting is a difficult journey however a recent book, Growing With by Kara Powell and Steven Argue helps to shed light on how parents can grow with their children through “a mutual journey of intentional growth for both ourselves and our children that trust God to transform us all” (Powell & Argue, 2019, p. 23).  This resource explains three stages that teenagers and college students transition through along with three roles that parents can fulfill in order to assist their students fully.  To fully understand this process we must first comprehend the various phases that student’s transition through as described by Powell & Argue as learners, explorers, and focusers.

     A brief description of each of these phases (for students) is necessary moving forward:

Characteristics of Learners (typically ages 13-18)

Learning how to use their increased capabilities

Learning how to live in their physically changing bodies

Learning how to manage their heightened emotional awareness

Learning how to navigate a broadening circle of relationships embedded with expectations

Learning how to start living out their faith as their own

Characteristics of Explorers (roughly ages 18-23)

Exploring career paths through schooling, internships, travel, military service, new jobs, or gap year projects

Exploring their own interests, gifts, and talents

Exploring what they desire in deeper, more romantic relationships

Exploring new ways to relate to their parents

Exploring what they believe and how those beliefs inform their view of work, relationships, faith, and life

Characteristics of Focusers (typically around ages 23-29)

Focusing on their careers

Focusing on their relationships

Focusing on their beliefs

Focusing on a reset

     Additionally, there is the need to understand the vital role that parents can embark on to grow with their students.

Characteristics of Parents as Teachers: (occurs with students who are in the Learner phase)

Teaching invites and endures practicing

Teaching trains specific skills

Teaching encourages reflection

Teaching introduces choice and agency

Teaching fosters collaboration

Characteristics of Parents as Guides: (occurs with students who are in the Explorer phase)

Guiding requires more empathy and perspective taking

Guiding discerns both novice and intermediate terrain

Guiding values different forms of appreciation

Characteristics of Parents as Resourcers: (occurs with students who are in the Focuser phase)

Resourcing exercises patience

Resourcing offers perspective

Resourcing supports no-matter-what

     Both the student and the parent must understand their unique roles as they navigate these phases together.  Powell and Argue noted that through the embracing of these roles, both parties would be able to grow with one another in faith and through the adulting process.  This resource provided through the wonderful people of Fuller Youth Institute provides insights, success stories, and stories of failure from two seasoned and experienced parents/pastors who desire to provide hope and a case for momentum to increase the partnership between students and parents as they grow with each other.

     If you wold like to learn more about this amazing resource you can preorder the book (releases on March 5th) or visit https://growingwithbook.com/.  Powell and Argue offered a prayer for all parents that desire to grow with their children that will serve as the sending point of this post:

     Jesus, we thank you that in the midst of the ups and downs of parenting, we can place our hope in you.  We are grateful for how you use parenting to prune us and shape us more and more into your image.  Please help us abide in you so that we may bear great fruit in our families and in our world.  Thank you that you love our kids even more than we do.  Thank you that you want the very best for them and for us.  Please help us rest in your powerful grace that continues to transform us all.  Amen.

#GrowingWith #Parenting #LovingOurKids #FullerYouthInstitute

[bluewatsons]

Bryan Caplan, The Economics of Szasz: Preferences, Constraints and Mental Illness, 18 Rationality & Society 333 (2006)

Abstract

Even confirmed economic imperialists typically acknowledge that economic theory does not apply to the seriously mentally ill. Building on psychiatrist Thomas Szasz’s philosophy of mind, this article argues that most mental illnesses are best modeled as extreme preferences, not constraining diseases. This perspective sheds light not only on relatively easy cases like personality disorders, but also on the more extreme cases of delusions and hallucinations. Contrary to Szasz’s critics, empirical advances in brain science and behavioral genetics are largely orthogonal to his position. While involuntary psychiatric treatment might still be rationalized as a way to correct intra-family externalities, it is misleading to think about it as a benefit for the patient.

Do we want two types of accounts about human behavior – one to explain the conduct of sane or mentally healthy persons, and another to explain the conduct of insane or mentally ill persons? I maintain that we do not need, and should not try, to account for normal behavior one way (motivationally), and for abnormal behavior another way (causally). Specifically, I suggest that the principle, ‘Actions speak louder than words,’ can be used to explain the conduct of mentally ill persons just as well as it can the behavior of mentally healthy persons. Thomas Szasz, Insanity: The Idea and Its Consequences (1997: 352)

1. Introduction

Even the staunchest proponents of economic imperialism have long made an exception for the seriously mentally ill. Posner (1998: 258) remarks that:

If a person is insane either in the sense that he does not know that what he is doing is criminal (he kills a man who he thinks is actually a rabbit) or that he cannot control himself (he hears voices that he believes are divine commanding him to kill people), he will not be deterred by the threat of criminal punishment.

Cooter and Ulen’s (1988: 237) Law and Economics text is more explicit:

If the promisor’s preferences are unstable or not well-ordered, then he is unable to conclude a perfect contract. The law says that such people’s promises are unenforceable because they are legally incompetent. For example, children and the insane do not have stable, well-ordered preferences, and, as a result, their promises are unenforceable.

Even Milton Friedman (1962: 33) concurs: ‘Paternalism is inescapable for those whom we designate as not responsible. The clearest case, perhaps, is that of madmen. We are willing neither to permit them freedom nor to shoot them.’

Though these authors are usually eager to bring social phenomena into the orbit of economics, they not only make an exception for severe mental illness; they treat the exception as uncontroversial. Over time, however, diagnoses of mental illness have become increasingly widespread.1 Epidemiologists now report that 20% or more of the USA population suffers from mental illness during a given year (Kessler et al. 1994). A seemingly small loophole in the applicability of economics has grown beyond recognition.

This article argues that much if not all of the loophole should never have been opened in the first place. Most glaringly, a large fraction of what is called mental illness is nothing other than unusual preferences – fully compatible with basic consumer theory. Alcoholism is the most transparent example: in economic terms, it amounts to an unusually strong preference for alcohol over other goods. But the same holds in numerous other cases. To take a more recent addition to the list of mental disorders, it is natural to conceptualize Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) as an exception- ally high disutility of labor, combined with a strong taste for variety.2

Consider how economists would respond if anyone other than a mental health professional described a person’s preferences as ‘sick’ or ‘irrational’. Intransitivity aside, the stereotypical economist would quickly point out that these negative adjectives are thinly disguised normative judgments, not scientific or medical claims. Why should mental health professionals be exempt from economists’ standard critique?

This is essentially the question asked by psychiatry’s most vocal internal critic, Thomas Szasz. In his voluminous writings, Szasz has spent over 40 years arguing that mental illness is a ‘myth’ – not in the sense that abnormal behavior does not exist, but rather that ‘diagnosing’ it is an ethical judgment, not a medical one.3 In a characteristic passage, Szasz (1990: 115) writes that:

Psychiatric diagnoses are stigmatizing labels phrased to resemble medical diagnoses, applied to persons whose behavior annoys or offends others. Those who suffer from and complain of their own behavior are usually classified as ‘neurotic’; those whose behavior makes others suffer, and about whom others complain, are usually classified as ‘psychotic’.

The American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) 1973 vote to take homosexuality off the list of mental illnesses is a microcosm of the overall field (Bayer 1981). The medical science of homosexuality had not changed; there were no new empirical tests that falsified the standard view. Instead, what changed was psychiatrists’ moral judgment of it – or at least their willingness to express negative moral judgments in the face of intensifying gay rights activism. Robert Spitzer, then head of the Nomenclature Committee of the American Psychiatric Association, was especially open about the priority of social acceptance over empirical science. When publicly asked whether he would consider removing fetishism and voyeurism from the psychiatric nomenclature, he responded, ‘I haven’t given much thought to [these problems] and perhaps that is because the voyeurs and the fetishists have not yet organized themselves and forced us to do that’ (Bayer 1981: 190). Even if the consensus view of homosexuality had remained constant, of course, the ‘disease’ label would have remained a covert moral judgment, not a value-free medical diagnosis.

Although Szasz does not use economic language to make his point, this article argues that most of his objections to official notions of mental illness fit comfortably inside the standard economic framework. Indeed, at several points he comes close to reinventing the wheel of consumer choice theory:

We may be dissatisfied with television for two quite different reasons: because the set does not work, or because we dislike the program we are receiving. Similarly, we may be dissatisfied with ourselves for two quite different reasons: because our body does not work (bodily illness), or because we dislike our conduct (mental illness). (Szasz 1990: 127)

Explicitly wedding standard economic concepts to Szasz’s philosophy of mind allows us to spell out his position with new clarity and force. How so? Consumer choice theory has two basic building blocks: preferences and budget constraints. Inside of this framework, how would one model physical disease? By and large, as an inward shift of the budget constraint: When you have the flu, for example, your peak level of physical performance declines. In contrast, most mental diseases amount to nothing more than unusual preferences; they do not affect what a person can do, only what they want to do. An oft-repeated slogan states that ‘Mental disease is just like any other disease’, but elementary microeconomics highlights a disanalogy with a distinct Szaszian flavor. To call someone physically ill is (usually) a descriptive claim about what a person is able to do; to call someone mentally ill is (usually) a normative claim about what preferences he ought to change.

In addition to unusual preferences, the mentally ill are often said to suffer from delusional beliefs. This criterion has greater economic appeal than bald complaints about preferences: Since the rational expectations revolution, economists have routinely equated systematically biased beliefs with ‘irrationality’ (Caplan 2002; Sheffrin 1996; Thaler 1992). In practice, however, only unpopular delusions provoke diagnoses of mental illness. Adherence to the dogmas of an established religion or ideology – no matter how bizarre – almost never attracts psychiatric attention. Originating your own bizarre belief system frequently does.4 In Szasz’s (1990: 215) words:

If you believe you are Jesus or that the Communists are after you (and they are not) – then your belief is likely to be regarded as a symptom of schizophrenia. But if you believe that Jesus is the Son of God or that Communism is the only scientifically and morally correct form of government – then your belief is likely to be regarded as a reflection of who you are: Christian or Communist.

Once again, mental health specialists’ covert standard is not scientific or medical, but moral: Absurd beliefs shared by millions are ‘healthy’; equally absurd beliefs held by a lone individual are ‘sick’. While economists have only begun to study the demand for irrational beliefs (Akerlof 1989; Akerlof and Dickens 1982; Caplan 2001), there is little if any reason to treat ‘popular’ and ‘niche’ delusions asymmetrically.

I organize this article as follows. The next section summarizes the distinctive features of Szasz’s position and corrects popular misconceptions about it. Section 3 considers the best way to model disease in economic terms. Section 4 explains why at least a high fraction of mental illnesses must be formalized in the opposite way, as preferences. Section 5 analyzes the ‘hard cases’ of hallucinations and delusions. Section 6 argues that the progress of brain science and behavioral genetics sheds little light on deeper questions about the nature of mental illness. Section 7 concludes.

2. A Brief Survey of Szasz

Thomas Szasz is probably best known for his opposition to involuntary mental hospitalization. His (1990: 107) rejection is categorical and impassioned:

Involuntary mental hospitalization is like slavery. Refining the legal or psychiatric criteria for commitment is like prettifying the slave plantations. The problem is not how to improve or reform commitment, but how to abolish it.

Unfortunately, his policy advocacy overshadows the more novel aspect of Szasz’s thought: his philosophy of mind. For Szasz, the most salient fact about human motivation and thought is its vast heterogeneity. Even if we limit the sample to people with a ‘clean bill’ of psychiatric health, the range of desires and viewpoints is amazingly wide (Caplan 2003; Piedmont 1998). There are monks and prostitutes, mountain climbers and shut-ins, CEOs and beach bums, Sunni Muslims and Trotskyist splitters. Great works of literature are perhaps the most powerful evidence of human diversity: think of the chasms between Iago, Brutus or Falstaff in Shakespeare; Pierre, Rostov or Anna Karenina in Tolstoy; Javert, Frollo or Quasimodo in Hugo. Indeed, one of the lessons of literature is that characters’ superficially inexplicable behavior becomes intelligible once you see it from their perspective.

Now consider the common sense view of mental illness: ‘You would have to be crazy to do that!’ or, as Sylvia Nasar (1998: 18) describes schizophrenia, ‘More than any other symptom, the defining characteristic of the illness is the profound feeling of incomprehensibility and inaccessibility that sufferers provoke in other people. Psychiatrists describe the person’s sense of being separated by a ‘‘gulf which defies description’’ from individuals who seem ‘‘totally strange, puzzling, inconceivable, uncanny, and incapable of empathy, even to the point of being sinister and frightening’’.’ Szasz faults the common sense view for refusing to take human heterogeneity seriously. What makes you think that no human being would prefer a life of day-dreaming, play-acting, daily heroin use or sadism? Is this any less credible than other unusual preferences that now escape psychiatric stigma, such as being gay, entering a convent, or ‘speaking in tongues’ in a Protestant church? As Szasz (1997: 64) critically observes:

It is wonderfully revealing of the nature of psychiatry that whereas in natural science there is a premium on the expert observer’s ability to understand what he observes . . . in psychiatry there is a premium on the expert’s inability to understand what he observes (and to understand it less well than the object he observes, which is typically another person eager to proffer his own understanding of his own behavior).

Thus, psychiatrists’ inability to understand economist Donald McCloskey’s desire to become Deirdre led to two short but involuntary hospitalizations. But she (1999: xiv) maintains that she simply would rather be a woman than a man:

In response to your question Why? ‘Can’t I just be?’ You, dear reader, are. No one gets indignant if you have no answer to why you are an optimist or why you like peach ice cream. These days most people will grant you an exception from the why question if you are gay . . . I want the courtesy and the safety of a whyless treatment extended to gender crossings.

Szasz maintains that it is equally easy to ‘get inside the heads’ of most of the other people psychiatrists diagnose as mentally ill. Their behavior is extreme, but their motives are familiar. As Szasz (1990: 121) uncharitably puts it: ‘Among persons categorized as mentally ill, there are two radically different types. One is composed of inadequate, unskilled, lazy, or stupid persons; the other, of protestors, revolutionaries, those on strike against their relatives or society.’5

The strong temptation to label individuals who fit either description as ‘mentally ill’ is a predictable byproduct of human heterogeneity. If people in close proximity – such as families – have radically different goals, conflict is almost sure to arise. This makes the concept of mental illness strategically useful, both as an excuse for deviant behavior and as a justification for harsh measures to combat it. As Szasz (1990: 135) puts it: ‘Mental illness is a myth whose function is to disguise and thus render more palatable the bitter pill of moral conflicts in human relations. In asserting that there is no such thing as mental illness I do not deny that people have problems coping with life and each other’. But despite its social function, mental illness is metaphorical, like ‘lovesickness’ or ‘homesickness’.

Another strain of Szasz’s thought emphasizes the lack of neurological evidence that the putatively mentally ill suffer from brain diseases:

Demonstrable bodily lesion is the gold standard of medical diagnosis. Without practical convertibility into gold, the value of paper money rests on faith. Without conceptual convertibility into bodily lesion, the diagnosis of disease rests only on faith. Unbacked by gold, paper money is fiat money – the politically irresistible incentive for debauching the currency, called ‘inflation.’ Unbacked by lesion, diagnosis is fiat diagnosis – the medically irresistible incentive for debauching the concept of disease, called ‘psychiatry’. (1990: 9)

While he grants that such neurological evidence has occasionally surfaced – most famously in the case of paresis (syphilis of the brain) – such cases are remarkably rare (Szasz 1976). In fact, paresis and schizophrenia are so different that the proven neurological basis for the former makes it less likely that there is any neurological basis for the latter. A person with paresis ‘exhibited objective neurological signs; the illness was characterized by a rapidly downhill course with an invariably fatal outcome; and at autopsy, the patient’s brain showed easily identifiable morphological (structural) abnormalities’. In contrast, a person with schizophrenia ‘exhibits no neurological signs; the illness is not characterized by a rapidly downhill course and is never fatal; and at autopsy, the patient’s brain shows no identifiable morphological abnormalities. Some analogy’ (Szasz 1997: 89). Consistent with these observations, schizophrenia still does not receive an entry in as comprehensive a work as Anderson’s Pathology (1996).

Eminent psychiatrists occasionally admit the difficulty of connecting mental illness to brain abnormalities. In The Harvard Guide to Psychiatry, Renshaw and Rauch (1999: 84) grant that ‘Current understanding of the pathobiology underlying primary psychiatric disorders is quite limited, and pathognomonic imaging profiles indicative of specific psychiatric disorders have not been identified’. Even the intensive and long-running search for a biological cause of schizophrenia has been surprisingly unsuccessful, especially taking publication bias into account. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), Fourth Edition, Text Revision (APA 2000) acknowledges that ‘No laboratory findings have been identified that are diagnostic of Schizophrenia’ (2000: 305). Another chapter in The Harvard Guide to Psychiatry asserts that brain abnormalities are common in schizophrenics, but acknowledges that ‘no single abnormality is found in all or even most brains from schizophrenic patients’ (Tsuang et al. 1999: 264). Breggin (1991: 84) questions even these limited findings on the grounds that almost all subjects in modern brain research on schizophrenia have histories of heavy anti-psychotic medication, which itself is known to cause brain damage. Brain autopsies conducted on schizophrenics before the introduction of anti-psychotics generally found no abnormalities.

Most psychiatrists predictably minimize the importance of their field’s past failures, but Szasz sees strong and uncomfortable implications. One is that until the brain lesions underlying a mental illness have been found, psychiatrists ought to be far less certain that an illness even exists. Another is that if the absence of lesions in a given brain were affirmatively proven, psychiatrists ought to admit that the individual is not sick, no matter how odd his behavior is (Szasz 1997: 78).

At times, Szasz seems to make the stronger claim that since mental illnesses are metaphorical, empirical study of their biological basis is a category error: ‘Looking for the organic etiology of mental illness is like looking for the caloric content of food for thought’ (1990: 131). But Szasz does not literally rule out empirical research on this question. When his critic Seymour Kety objects that ‘Our ability to demonstrate and elucidate pathological disturbances is limited by the state of the art, and to assume their absence because they have not been demonstrated is a non sequitur’, Szasz (1997: 51) responds:

True enough. But I do not maintain that the nonexistence of pathological findings in schizophrenia proves there are none; I maintain only that a promise of such findings is only a promise, until it is fulfilled . . . If psychiatrists had to pay interest on their promises of pathological lesions, as borrowers must pay lenders, the interest alone would already have bankrupted them; instead, they keep issuing the same notes, undaunted by their perfect record of never meeting their obligations.

As mentioned earlier, perhaps the greatest misconception about Szasz’s work is that it is primarily a critique of involuntary mental hospitalization. Only a minority of his writings deal with psychiatric commitment, the insanity defense, or other policies related to mental illness. The bulk deals with philosophy of mind. Whether or not one agrees with his controversial position, it should be clear to any reader of the full Szaszian corpus that this stance is his most original and intellectually challenging contribution. Indeed, one could consistently embrace Szasz’s philosophy of mind, but advocate involuntary commitment on efficiency grounds as the best way to reduce the negative externalities that extreme eccentrics impose on their families and society.

Another misconception about Szasz is that he denies the connection between physical and mental activity. Critics often cite findings of ‘chemical imbalances’ in the mentally ill. The problem with these claims, from a Szaszian point of view, is not that they find a connection between brain chemistry and behavior.6 The problem is that ‘imbalance’ is a moral judgment masquerading as a medical one. Supposed we found that nuns had a brain chemistry verifiably different from non-nuns. Would we infer that being a nun is a mental illness?

A closely related misconception is that Szasz ignores medical evidence that many mental illnesses can be effectively treated.7 Once again, though, the ability of drugs to change brain chemistry and thereby behavior does nothing to show that the initial behavior was ‘sick’. If alcohol makes people less shy, is that evidence that shyness is a disease? An analogous point holds for evidence from behavioral genetics. If homosexuality turns out to be largely or entirely genetic, does that make it a disease?

Szasz’s philosophy of mind is unquestionably contrarian, and often provokes negative reactions.8 The remainder of this article maintains that – unlike the standard view of mental illness – Szasz’s main theses are strikingly consistent with basic microeconomics. Reframing Szasz in economic terms helps make his aphoristic thought both easier to understand and more introspectively plausible. Economists may be reluctant to fully embrace the Szaszian approach, and Szasz might object that my economistic reading misses important facets of his thought. Nevertheless, my thesis is that there are significant gains to trade between the economic approach to human behavior and Szasz’s analysis of mental illness.

3. Disease as Constraint

Consider normal physical diseases, such as cancer and influenza. Anderson’s Pathology describes their main symptoms:

The usual course of untreated cancer is continuous local and metastatic extension with progressive systemic effects, all of which combine to weaken the host in diverse ways until cachexia and death from sepsis or bronchopneumonia, or both, ensue. About half of the deaths in cancer patients result from infection . . . Other causes of death in these patients include organ failure, tumor infarction and hemorrhage, and carcinomatosis. (Lieberman and Lebovitz 1996: 540)

Sudden onset of headache, myalgias, fever, and chills are classic symptoms of most influenza-induced illness. Although sore throat and dry cough are common, they are rarely self-reported because of the overwhelming systemic symptoms, which predominate. Influenza produces such a rapid onset of high fever that febrile seizures are frequently triggered in children. (Hinrichs et al. 1996: 923)

How can these conditions be formally modeled? (Grossman 1972). Basic consumer theory makes the answer clear: It shifts your budget constraint inwards. If influenza or cancer actually kills you, your lifetime budget constraint shifts drastically inwards. But even if you escape the worst outcome, you lose on many other mar- gins. Influenza moves a normal temperature outside of your budget set; cancer makes you more vulnerable to other diseases. Further- more, in both cases your physical abilities typically decline. For example, you will probably be unable to walk at your normal speed.

Figure 1 illustrates the latter effect. If a person had 24 hours of time to divide between walking and resting, and a healthy person faced budget constraint A, then after contracting the flu or cancer, the same person would face a budget constraint such as B. A sufficiently sick person might collapse if he tried to walk for more than a few miles – suffering from reduced endurance as well as reduced speed. Then the budget constraint of the sick person would differ more starkly from the healthy person’s, as shown by the kinked constraint in Figure 2.

Figure 1. Illness as a budget constraint

Almost every traditional medical condition one can name can be modeled as an inward shift of one or more budget constraints. If your legs are paralyzed, the maximum amount you can walk under your own power falls to zero. If you have the common cold, the good of ‘not-sneezing’ suddenly falls on the wrong side of your budget set. If you have a stroke, the maximum number of words you can speak per minute shifts inwards. Mental retardation puts a high score on an IQ test beyond your reach, and common forms of brain damage impair your memory.

Budget constraints shift in for many reasons other than disease. But traditional medical conditions and shrunken budget sets go hand in hand.9 It is nearly paradoxical to assert, ‘All of my abilities are at their peak levels and I expect them to remain so,10 but I am nevertheless sick.’

Figure 2. Illness as a kinked budget constraint

This is not to say that the preferences of the sick might not shift as well. For example, the indifference curves of a person with an upset stomach might shift to put more value on carbonated beverages. But for almost any ordinary disease or injury, shifts in preferences – if any – accompany shifting constraints. You can be physically sick without changing your preference orderings, but you cannot be physically sick without changing what you can do.

4. Mental Illness as Extreme Preference

Most mental illnesses do not fit the preceding template. Consider a paradigmatic case such as substance abuse. In what sense does this illness shift one’s budget constraint inwards? It is hard to see how it does. If one were to formalize it in economic terms, the natural strategy would be to model it as an extreme preference.

Note that ‘extreme’ does not mean ‘intransitive’ or ‘not-wellordered.’ Cooter and Ulen (1988) probably speak for many economists when they deny that the preferences of the severely mentally ill are well-ordered. But in fact, not only do individuals with mental disorders typically have transitive preferences; they usually have more definite and predictable orderings than the average person.11 People with Alzheimer’s disease may not have well-ordered preferences, but as Sylvia Nasar (1998: 324) explains, insanity is almost the opposite of senility:

[T]he delusional states typical of schizophrenia often have little in common with the dementia associated with, for example, Alzheimer’s disease. Rather than cloudiness, confusion, and meaninglessness, there is hyper-awareness, over- acuity, and an uncanny wakefulness. Urgent preoccupations, elaborate rationales, and ingenious theories dominate.

A person with anti-social personality disorder (ASPD), to take a less dramatic example, is also unusually transitive. Unlike most of us, he feels no need to strike a delicate balance between his own welfare and the welfare of others; he puts his own interests first and last. It is also worth pointing out that several mental disorders, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), come close to classifying transitivity as symptom (APA 2000: 462, 717).

It is also implausible to interpret most mental illness using a ‘hyperbolic discounting’ or ‘multiple selves’ model (Ainslie 1992). These might fit a moderate drug user who says he ‘wants to quit’; one symptom (albeit not a necessary condition) of substance dependence is ‘a persistent desire or unsuccessful efforts to cut down or control substance use’ (APA 2000: 197). But they do not fit the hard-core drug addict whose only wish is to be left alone to pursue his habit. The same holds for most serious mental disorders: They are considered ‘serious’ in large part because the affected individual continues to pursue the same objectionable behavior over time with no sign of regret or desire to change.

What then are ‘extreme’ preferences? In brief, they are preferences that few people share or condone, with large life consequences, that nevertheless satisfy the axioms of choice theory (Varian 1992). McCloskey’s autobiography, describing her ‘crossing’ from Donald to Deirdre, offers an especially vivid example. As she (1999: 82) puts it:

Donald had a conversation with himself about whether what he was doing was unusual. On the one hand, I wonder why more people aren’t doing this. But then, You don’t get it, do you, Donald? Most people don’t want to change gender.

Puzzled in return. Oh. You don’t say. That’s funny.

But is it not the case that most people with preferences extreme enough to attract psychiatric attention are also extremely unhappy?12 It depends on which extreme preferences one has. People with ASPD or NPD have inflated senses of self-worth almost by definition. In any case, if most people with extreme preferences are unhappy, this is weak evidence that their preferences are somehow inconsistent or irrational. Unpopular preferences – medicalized or not – naturally tend to reduce happiness. People with normal preferences can simultaneously ‘be themselves’ and be liked. People with abnormal preferences have to balance these two goals. Furthermore, unlike religious and cultural minorities, people with unique extreme preferences cannot easily retreat into an accepting subculture.

I now examine three common mental disorders – substance abuse, ADHD and ASPD. In each case, the leading ‘symptoms’ of these ‘illnesses’ – such as McCloskey’s preference for being a woman – turn out to be nothing more than unpopular preference orderings. There is no reason to think that individuals with these preferences fit the rational economic actor model less well than anyone else. The descriptions often make it clear that individuals with these conditions act exactly as one would expect a rational economic agent with unpopular preferences. Indeed, as we shall see, there are a few ‘symptoms of mental disorder’ that economists routinely assign to homo economicus.

4.1. Substance Abuse

The DSM (APA 2000: 199) classifies substance abuse as ‘A maladaptive pattern of substance use leading to clinically significant impairment or distress, as manifested by one (or more) of the following, occurring within a 12-month period’. Table 1 lists the criteria, all of which are preference-based. Take criterion 1: ‘recurrent substance use resulting in a failure to fulfill major role obligations at work, school, or home’. It is only a small step to translate this into the language of economic theory. If you have an unusually strong taste for alcoholic beverages or drugs – a taste so strong that you willingly risk family, friends and career to satisfy it, then you suffer from substance abuse.

Table 1. Some DSM-IV-TR diagnostic criteria for substance abuse

From an economic point of view, however, what is so puzzling about a person who prefers consuming alcohol to career success or family stability? Life is full of trade-offs. The fact that most of us would make a different choice is hardly evidence of irrationality. Neither is the fact that few alcoholics will admit their priorities; expressing regret and a desire to change is an excellent way to deflect social and legal sanctions.

The other three criteria in Table 1 fit the same pattern. You will be diagnosed as a victim of substance abuse if you use alcohol/drugs when it is ‘physically hazardous’ – in other words, if your taste is so strong that you are willing to take high safety risks (for yourself or others) to satisfy it. You can also be diagnosed if you have ‘recurrent substance-related legal problems’ – presumably because you have such a strong preference for alcohol/drugs that you are undeterred by ordinary expected punishments. The final criteria almost repeats the first – using the substance even though it causes ‘recurrent social or interpersonal problems’. The DSM definition strikingly fails to mention intransitivity. In fact, the people most likely to be diagnosed with severe substance abuse are heavy users who have no desire to change their lifestyle.

4.2. Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Substance abuse is a particularly straightforward case for economists to analyze, since it involves the trade-off between (1) one’s consumption level of a commodity and (2) the effects of this consumption on other areas of life. But numerous mental disorders have the same structure. One way to be diagnosed with ADHD, for example, is to have six or more of the symptoms of inattention shown in Table 2. Overall, the most natural way to formalize ADHD in economic terms is as a high disutility of work combined with a strong taste for variety. Undoubtedly, a person who dislikes working will be more likely to fail to ‘finish school work, chores or duties in the workplace’ and be ‘reluctant to engage in tasks that require sustained mental effort’. Similarly, a person with a strong taste for variety will be ‘easily distracted by extraneous stimuli’ and fail to ‘listen when spoken to directly’, especially since the ignored voices demand attention out of proportion to their entertainment value.

Table 2. Some DSM-IV-TR diagnostic criteria for ADHD

A few of the symptoms of inattention – especially (2), (5) and (9), are worded to sound more like constraints. However, each of these is still probably best interpreted as descriptions of preferences. As the DSM uses the term, a person who ‘has difficulty’ ‘sustaining attention in tasks or play activities’ could just as easily be described as ‘disliking’ sustaining attention. Similarly, while ‘is often forgetful in daily activities’ could be interpreted literally as impaired memory, in context it refers primarily to conveniently forgetting to do things you would rather avoid. No one accuses a boy diagnosed with ADHD of forgetting to play videogames.13

4.3. Anti-social Personality Disorder

Homo economicus arguably suffers from this disorder by definition. Table 3 lists some of the DSM’s diagnostic criteria, any three of which are almost sufficient for a positive diagnosis. Since homo economicus always plans ahead – most notoriously with his unlimited use of backwards induction – symptoms (3) and (6) do not apply. But as a narrowly selfish being, homo economicus lacks remorse (symptom 7). Insofar as deceitfulness leads to personal profit, homo economicus is deceitful (symptom 2). And while homo economicus of course worries about his own safety, the safety of others concerns him only if he is financially responsible for it. In any case, all of the symptoms of ASPD are exclusively about preferences – for narrow selfishness, high discount rates and affinity for violence.

Table 3. Some DSM-IV-TR diagnostic criteria for antisocial personality

Admittedly, not all cases are easy to classify. I have some control over my heartbeat, but it is impossible for me to reduce it to 10 beats per minute. Is the number of times my heart beats per minute a constraint or a choice? The distinction between constraints and preferences suggests an illuminating test for ambiguous cases: Can we change a person’s behavior purely by changing his incentives? If we can, it follows that the person was able to act differently all along, but preferred not to; his condition is a matter of preference, not constraint. I will refer to this as the ‘Gun-to-the-Head Test’. If suddenly pointing a gun at alcoholics induces them to stop drinking, then evidently sober behavior was in their choice set all along. Conversely, if a gun-to-the-head fails to change a person’s behavior, it is highly likely (though not necessarily true) that you are literally asking the impossible.14

Obviously most physical diseases would pass the gun-to-the-head test. Pointing a gun at a paralyzed man will not enable him to walk, nor can you frighten a cancer patient into living longer. Conditions like mental retardation and Alzheimer’s disease are also highly likely to pass the gun-to-the-head test. Smart people occasionally play dumb, and the elderly might feign senility from time to time; but most people who appear to have very low cognitive ability really do.

The same cannot be said, however, for the large majority of mental disorders. Though the gun-to-the-head test rarely happens, most people with mental disorders respond to far milder incentives. During the course of any given day, individuals diagnosed with substance abuse, ADHD and ASPD act contrary to their impulses because giving in to them would be too expensive. Studies of demand elasticity normally find that consumption of hard drugs is quite sensitive to price (van Ours 1995); in fact, the psychiatric literature on ‘contingency management’ shows that a high percentage of heavy users of alcohol and drugs will go cold turkey for a moderate price (Higgins and Petry 1999). Even lazy people with a strong taste for variety will complete a boring task if their life is on the line. Anti- social personalities are prone to perform acts ‘that are grounds for arrest’, but that does not mean that they take actions that surely end in severe punishment.

Suppose one grants that at least a large fraction of mental illnesses are nothing more than extreme preferences. What follows? Most importantly, it confirms the core Szaszian thesis: psychiatric diagnoses are not descriptive judgments comparable to a diagnosis of cancer, but normative judgments about whether preferences are good or bad, right or wrong. Disputes about whether ‘X is a mental illness’ cannot be resolved by more and better empirical research, but only – if at all – by ethical reasoning.

5. Mental Illness, Systematic Bias, and Preferences Over Beliefs

At this point, one might reasonably object that I consider only the easiest targets. Perhaps ADHD is a medicalized label for laziness. But what about the symptoms that we intuitively associate with full-blown psychosis or ‘insanity’ – delusions and hallucinations?

5.1. Delusions

The DSM defines a delusion as ‘a false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everyone else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary’, adding the further condition that ‘The belief is not one ordinarily accepted by other members of the person’s culture or subculture (e.g., it is not an article of religious faith)’ (APA 2000: 821). Another reference source more succinctly defines a delusion as ‘a fixed false belief (excluding beliefs that are part of a religious movement)’.15 These definitions are striking on several levels. Most obviously, why are religious beliefs exempt from this stigma? What about quasi-religious political movements like Leninism or Nazism, comprised almost entirely of fixed false beliefs (Hoffer 1951)? What about religious movements with a small number of members? One member?

One could eliminate the ‘religious exemption’ and conclude that the fraction of the population suffering from delusions has been greatly underestimated. However, the exemption does seem to have a rationale: The cognitive faculties of the overwhelming majority of religious believers are functional. Outside of religion, they habitually adjust their beliefs in response to evidence. So it is natural to interpret their embrace of improbable religious doctrines as a choice to relax ordinary intellectual standards. Doing so allows them to enjoy not just the social benefits of religious participation (Iannacone 1998). It also provides direct personal benefits, such as a sense of identity and meaning.

In other words, just because a person believes patent absurdities does not imply that he cannot believe otherwise, that changing his mind is outside his choice set. Instead, he may have preferences over beliefs (Akerlof 1989; Akerlof and Dickens 1982; Caplan 2001, 2000). If individuals have to choose between maintaining a cherished worldview and giving the other side a fair hearing, many would rather forego the latter. The competing hypothesis, of course, is that a person wants to grasp the truth, but lacks the cognitive resources to process evidence or detect errors.

From this perspective, it is worth considering how most psychiatrists would have diagnosed the founders of the world’s leading religions. What would they make of their assertions that God speaks with them, giving them revelations to deliver to the rest of mankind? Were they paranoid schizophrenics? A more plausible account is that they were people who wanted (among other things) to believe in their own cosmic importance – and managed to convince others to accommodate them. And there is every reason to think that such motivations remain salient to many people today, though in a more secular age religious themes will be less prominent. But variations on the theme of ‘I am a leading figure in world history, locked in combat with powerful enemies’ have a timeless appeal to human vanity.

If religious ‘fixed, false beliefs’ stem from the refusal to exercise one’s cognitive faculties, as opposed to defective cognitive faculties, why might not the same hold for non-religious fixed, false beliefs (Shermer 2002)? Perhaps they too provide a sense of identity and meaning. This is essentially Szasz’s view: People largely become schizophrenics because they find reality too unpleasant to cope with:

What the psychiatrist calls a ‘delusion of persecution’ is one of the most dramatic human defenses against the feeling of personal insignificance and worthlessness. In fact, no one cares a hoot about Jones. He is an extra on the stage of life. But he wants to be a star. He cannot become one by making a fortune on the stock market or winning a Nobel prize. So he claims that the FBI or the Communists are watching his every move, are tapping his phone, and so forth. Why would they be doing this, unless Jones were a very important person? In short, the paranoid delusion is a problem to the patient’s family, employers, and friends: to the patient, it is a solution to the problem of the meaning(lessness) of his life. (1990: 116)

What about paranoid schizophrenic John Nash, who in fact did win a Nobel prize? Surprisingly, he fits Szasz’s profile, because Nash’s great ambition was not to earn a Nobel prize in economics, but the coveted Fields Medal in mathematics. In 1958, he failed to win it, and given his age he had little hope of ever doing so. As his biographer Sylvia Nasar (1998: 229) explains: ‘One can almost imagine a sniggering commentator inside Nash’s head: ‘‘What, thirty already, and still no prizes, no offer from Harvard, no tenure even? And you thought you were such a great mathematician? A genius? Ha, ha, ha!’’’. And Nash’s personal problems – a gay or bisexual man, unhappily married, and expecting a child – were at least as serious as his professional disappointments.

Since, as Nash later observed, ‘rational thought imposes a limit on a person’s concept of his relation to the cosmos’, he escaped into a world of fantasy, where his failures no longer mattered. His biographer confirms the subjective benefits: ‘For Nash, the recovery of everyday thought processes produced a sense of diminution and loss . . . He refers to his remissions not as joyful returns to a healthy state, but as ‘‘interludes, as it were, of enforced rationality’’’ (Nasar 1998: 295). His choice to abandon his academic career was much in the spirit of Robert Frank’s (1985) Choosing the Right Pond: If Nash could not be a Fields Medalist, his next choice was to be Emperor of Antarctica, not a second-rate mathematician.16

Is it inconceivable that anyone could or would choose to be a paranoid schizophrenic? Many psychiatrists found Nash’s eventual recovery astounding, leading some to question the original diagnosis (Nasar 1998: 350–3). But Nash’s first-hand account is that his return to rationality was a choice:

Gradually I began to intellectually reject some of my delusionally influenced lines of thinking which had been characteristic of my orientation. This began, most recognizably, with the rejection of politically-oriented thinking as essentially a hopeless waste of intellectual effort. (Nasar 1998: 353)

It is noteworthy that Nash consciously decided to stop thinking about the two subject matters where normal people routinely embrace ‘fixed, false beliefs’: not just politics, but religion as well (Nasar 1998: 354). He compares his recovery to dieting.17 Despite its short-run emotional benefits, he decided to stop indulging his daily temptation to hide from life:

Actually, it can be analogous to the role of willpower in effective dieting: If one makes an effort to ‘rationalize’ one’s thinking one can simply recognize and reject the irrational hypotheses of delusional thinking. (Nasar 1998: 354)

Intellectual dieting would be an implausible solution if one were utterly disconnected from reality. But his biographer explains that this describes neither Nash nor the typical schizophrenic:

[T]he ability to apprehend certain aspects of everyday reality remains curiously intact. Had anyone asked Nash what year it was or who was in the White House or where he was living, he could no doubt have answered perfectly accurately, had he wished to. Indeed, even as he entertained his most surreal notions, Nash displayed an ironic awareness that his insights were essentially private, unique to himself, and bound to seem strange or unbelievable to others. (Nasar 1998: 324–5)

In fact, ‘While he was ill, Nash traveled all over Europe and America, got legal help, and learned to write sophisticated computer programs’ (Nasar 1998: 19).

Nash describes the behavior of his son – also a diagnosed para- noid schizophrenic – in comparable terms: ‘I don’t think of my son . . . as entirely a sufferer: in part, he is simply choosing to escape from ‘‘the world’’’(Nasar 1998: 385). The father’s attitude is not so shocking considering his son’s objection whenever urged to complete his PhD: ‘Why do I have to do anything? My father doesn’t have to do anything. My mother supports him. Why can’t she support me?’ (1998: 346). Nash’s biographer laments his ‘insensitivity’ on this point (1998: 385), but who is in a better position to understand his son’s state of mind?

Even if John Nash chose his condition, it does not follow that every schizophrenic does the same. But it underscores the point that there are two competing hypotheses to explain the existence of delusions.18 In economic terms, one is preferences, the other is constraints. To deal with this complex issue, it is once again helpful to consider the Gun-to-the-Head Test. If maintaining a fixed, false belief would result in death, does the believer ‘unfix’ it? If he does, sound cognition must have been in his choice set all along, but for whatever reason falsehood was more appealing.

At least in the case of religious ‘fixed, false beliefs’, people who pass the gun-to-the-head test are rare.19 Gaetano Mosca (1939: 181–2) provides one intriguing illustration:

Mohammed, for instance, promises paradise to all who fall in a holy war. Now if every believer were to guide his conduct by that assurance in the Koran, every time a Mohammedan army found itself faced by unbelievers it ought either to conquer or to fall to the last man. It cannot be denied that a certain number of individuals do live up to the letter of the Prophet’s word, but as between defeat and death followed by eternal bliss, the majority of Mohammedans normally elect defeat.

Perhaps the tiny minority of willing martyrs really did have defective brains that literally prevented them from seeing the world as it is. But even here, historical accounts of the martyrs raise significant doubts. Rodney Stark (1996: 163–89) argues that they were heavily motivated by community support and adulation, which they often enjoyed for years due to lags in the Roman legal system. Further- more, martyrs often discussed their temptation to give in. One rarely feels ‘tempted’ by an option that is not available to us in the first place: I am not tempted to win an Olympic gold medal in swimming. Socrates’ Apology is perhaps the most striking case of a man with unimpaired cognitive faculties who died for his beliefs. Indeed, before drinking the hemlock, Socrates demonstrated critical thinking abilities far in excess of the normal range (Ahrensdorf 1995). Blaming his decision on a brain defect is most implausible.

While the mentally ill rarely face the Gun-to-the-Head Test, a large fraction respond to less extreme incentives. The mentally ill routinely modify their behavior to avoid psychiatric hospitalization and unpleasant treatments. As psychiatrist Peter Breggin (1991: 61) reports, ‘[T]he drugs cause so much discomfort. . . that patients often stop saying what they believe to avoid getting larger doses and to bring a more speedy end to the treatment. As many ex-patients have told me, ‘‘I learned right away I’d better shut up or I’d get more of that stuff.’’’ This is so common that psychiatrists often suspect that ‘recovered’ patients are merely concealing their symptoms.20 The fear of more extreme treatments like electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) often affects behavior far beyond the walls of the psychiatric hospital. In one case study of female shock therapy patients, ‘Three of the ten women lived in dread of ECT for years afterward; and therefore they refrained from expressing any angry feelings toward their husbands, for fear of being sent back to the hospital for involuntary shock treatment’ (Breggin 1991: 200).

Patients’ responsiveness to incentives is well known to those who administer the incentives. A case study on the attitudes of shock therapists observed that shock was used ‘as a threat against difficult patients. Personnel on the hospital would warn, ‘‘You will go on the shock list’’’ (Breggin 1991: 212). Even when treating mentally ill children, psychiatrists recognize that incentives change behavior:

Used to saying what he thought with his dad, Sammy made the mistake of ‘talking back’ to one of the doctors. He was told that patients had to ‘earn’ their liberties and was reduced to the lowest disciplinary level – no visitors, no books, no radio, ‘no nothing’, as he later told his dad. (Breggin 1991: 294)

At least for many delusions, the fact that you would try to feign recovery shows that your degree of irrationality – not just outward behavior – is incentive-sensitive. Nash is once again an excellent example. ‘I thought I was a Messianic godlike figure with secret ideas’, he tells us. ‘I became a person of delusionally influenced thinking but of relatively moderate behavior and thus tended to avoid hospitalization and the direct attention of psychiatrists’ (Nasar 1998: 335). But if Nash were literally constrained to see him- self as a ‘godlike figure’, he would have imagined that he could free himself at any moment.21 He would be unable to grasp that – in reality – his freedom depended on a psychiatrist’s diagnosis, so he would have no motive to ‘beat the system’. But try to beat it he did, regularly acting more normally to avoid or end commitment: ‘When I had been long enough hospitalized . . . I would finally renounce my delusional hypotheses and revert to thinking of myself as a human of more conventional circumstances’ (Nasar 1998: 295). He also firmly grasped the social process of commitment, knowing, for instance, that his sister would probably try to commit him after their mother’s death (1998: 330–1). Perhaps most strikingly, to deter others from committing him, Nash did not threaten divine retribution, but ordinary social sanctions like divorce (from his wife), and breaking off relations (with his sister).

There is more systematic evidence from so-called ‘token economy programs’ that mental patients substantially change their behavior in response to modest material rewards (Corrigan 1995; Stuve and Salinas 2002). These programs pay patients fixed numbers of tokens for desired behavior. Tokens can be redeemed for benefits like snacks, magazines, grounds passes, and the right to wear non- institutional clothing. Paying patients turns out to be a highly effective way to improve hygiene, group participation and adherence to ward rules, and deter threats and violence. It can also curtail ‘screaming, ritualistic behaviors, mannerisms, responsiveness to hallucinations, and the frequency of delusional talk’ (Stuve and Salinas 2002: 824).

Since hospital residents typically have the most extreme problems, it is striking that their behavior is so price elastic. Furthermore, at least in many cases this indicates that their delusions – not just their outward behavior – respond to incentives. If a mental defect literally compels you to see yourself as all-powerful, why would you chase after petty monetary rewards? If, in contrast, the cause of megalomaniacal delusions is preferences rather than constraints, we should expect patients to start ignoring them as the material cost of adhering to them rises. As it turns out, when the price of being wrong goes up, even the delusional start to recognize the difference between reality and their self-aggrandizing worldview.

5.2. Hallucinations

Perceptions, unlike beliefs, rarely contain an element of choice. Even if you put a gun to my head and tell me to see a blank wall in front of me rather than my computer, I will not because I cannot. People who genuinely experience hallucinations have the same problem. If you are under the influence of a hallucinogenic drug, you see things that do not exist even if you would rather not (hence the ‘bad trip’) (APA 2000: 250–3). From an economic perspective, hallucinating is similar to being blind or deaf; seeing or hearing the real world lies outside your budget constraint. Of all the symptoms of mental illness, hallucinations are the least objectionably modeled as constraints.

The same does not hold, however, for claiming to hallucinate. Initially, it seems unlikely that anyone would lie about such a thing. However, Szasz (1997: 117) maintains that such skepticism is well-grounded:

[W]hen a grisly, unsolved crime is reported by the press and the police look for the person who did it, innocent people often come forward and confess to the crime. Such a confession is never accepted on its face value as true; on the contrary, it is treated with the utmost skepticism. On the other hand, when a person lodges a psychiatric complaint against himself, it is not investigated at all.

In both cases, people pretend to have seen or heard things that did not happen because they prefer negative attention to none at all. Consider people who claim to have been abducted by aliens. Why do they do it? Well, if beings from other worlds travel all the way to earth just to probe you, you must be a pretty important person.

In the pre-modern period, one could get the same feeling by claiming to see and talk to angels or demons: ‘[W]omen in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were often accused of (and even allegedly experienced or confessed to) having illicit sexual encounters with aliens – in this case the alien was usually Satan himself . . .’ (Shermer 2002: 97).

Fabrication aside, minimal scrutiny often reveals that what superficially sound like reports of hallucinations are only delusions.22 As Shermer (2002: 96) recounts:

While dining with the abductees, I found out something very revealing: not one of them recalled being abducted immediately after the experience. In fact, for most of them, many years went by before they ‘remembered’ the experience.

Like most delusions, their stories usually reflect a choice to relax normal intellectual standards, not lack of ability to impose these standards. Shermer (2002: 95) describes the abductees as ‘perfectly sane, rational, intelligent folks’ overall. Yet they exempt their abduction beliefs from straightforward objections:

[A woman] said that the aliens actually implanted a human–alien hybrid in her womb and that she gave birth to the child. Where is the child now? The aliens took it back, she explained. One man pulled up his pant leg to show me scars on his legs that he said were left by the aliens. They looked like normal scars to me . . . One man explained that the aliens took his sperm. I asked him how he knew that they took his sperm, since he had said he was asleep when he was abducted. He said that he knew because he had an orgasm. I responded, ‘Is it possible you simply had a wet dream?’ He was not amused. (2002: 94)

Szasz similarly maintains that many alleged hallucinations are only eccentric descriptions of ordinary experience. To take the most common form (APA 2000: 300), psychiatrists routinely equate ‘hear- ing voices’ with auditory hallucination. But when a person feels guilty, we often say that he ‘hears the voice of conscience’. Such a person will often not just feel guilty; thoughts such as ‘What you’re doing is wrong!’ repeatedly come to mind. To take a stronger case, the DSM treats ‘a voice keeping up a running commentary on the person’s behavior or thoughts, or two or more voices conversing with each other’ as an exceptionally serious symptom (APA 2000: 312). But this describes any person deliberating between major life options over an extended period of time.23 While these examples might seem to stretch the meaning of ‘hallucination’, it is the DSM that explicitly fails to distinguish whether ‘the source of the voices is perceived as being inside or outside of the head’ (APA 2000: 823).

An analogous point holds for ‘seeing things’. To equate this with visual hallucinations is not the only interpretation, nor even a particularly plausible one. It is more natural to interpret it as imagination. I cannot literally see Satan just because I want to, but I can visualize a red being with horns and a pitchfork on demand.

How could genuine hallucinations be identified, even in principle? The gun-to-the-head test remains a helpful benchmark. If a person’s perception ‘suddenly improves’ after the cost of seeing and hearing nonexistent things goes up, that is strong evidence that his senses were functioning fine all along.

In the absence of incentives, it depends heavily on the trustworthiness of the source. It is suspicious if a person who claims to hallucinate also happens to put a low value on truth in other contexts. Conversely, if a person who shows no inclination to bend the truth in any other situation claims to have strange visual or auditory experiences, his self-reports have to be taken more seriously.

In the DSM, having both delusions and hallucinations is almost a sufficient condition for schizophrenia (APA 2000: 312). However, the preceding analysis suggests that a person who says he has hallucinations but not delusions is more credibly diseased than a person who claims to have both. If most delusions arise out of a choice to relax normal intellectual standards, then the delusional suffer from a credibility gap. Can the self-reports of a man who finds solace in a version of ‘I am a leading figure in world history, locked in combat with powerful enemies’ be trusted when we ask him to distinguish between direct observation, recovered memories, and day- dreaming? Imagine asking Joseph Smith if he literally saw and conversed with the angel Moroni (Hardy 2003). Given his overall worldview, he might not consider it a lie to treat his dreams or musings as on par with direct experience.

6. Orthogonality of Behavioral Genetics and Brain Science

The most sophisticated critics of Szasz grant that he is a brilliant debater, but add that he conveniently ignores hard scientific data from both brain science and behavioral genetics. Psychiatrist Seymour Kety (1974: 961) famously remarked that ‘if schizophrenia is a myth, it is a myth with a powerful genetic component’. Szasz seldom if ever cites contrary empirical findings. The natural inference is that such findings do not exist.

What this inference overlooks, however, is that brain science and behavioral genetics usually ask questions orthogonal to Szasz’s thesis. Return to the case of homosexuality. Does evidence of a strong genetic component raise the probability that homosexuality is a disease after all? It is hard to see how it would. Twin and adoption studies have found that genetics explains a substantial fraction of variation in almost every form of human behavior (Harris 1998; Segal 1999). Such studies can teach you about the cause of a condition already known to be a disease, but not separate diseases from non-diseases.

During the period when homosexuality was classified as a mental illness, psychiatrists heavily debated the extent to which it was inborn or environmental. The purpose of this debate was not to determine if homosexuality was in fact a disease, which was taken as given. Rather, competing theories had different implications for the best way to cure it (Bayer 1981: 18–40). This perspective is hardly surprising: ordinary physical disease has both genetic and environmental causes, and the point of distinguishing them is to develop better treatments, not ascertain whether they are ‘really diseases’.

A similar point holds for brain science and mental illness. If homosexuals were found to have verifiably different brain chemistry than heterosexuals, that would not raise the probability that being homosexual is a disease. Brain science is no more able to determine whether other forms of behavior are diseases. In most cases, this conclusion is obvious: If charity, or kindness to children or church attendance correlated with brain states, would anyone take this as evidence of their pathological character?

The brain scientists’ critique of Szasz takes on a straw man. It essentially asserts: ‘Your theory predicts no correlation between mental illness and brain states. Since there is a correlation, your theory is false’. But every major theory of mind from materialism to Cartesian dualism predicts a correlation between mental states and brain states. To take advances in brain science as ‘mounting evidence’ for one side reveals only a failure to understand the other side.

In a similar vein, brain science sheds little light on whether a condition arises out of preferences or constraints. Yes, constraints must have some biological basis; but the same is true of preferences. Even if a chemical were isolated that correlated perfectly with love of chocolate, that would not show that what appeared to be a preference was really a constraint. Rather it would show that a preference had a biological basis – which presumably we thought all along.

One might take Szasz’s failure to present original empirical evidence as the usual strategy of the a priori obscurantist. But this takes for granted that the empirical evidence is relevant to the debate. Szasz (1990: 216) asks: ‘If Christianity or Communism were called diseases, would psychiatrists look for their chemical and genetic causes?’ It would be a mistake to interpret his rhetorical question as an attack on genetics and brain research. On the contrary, it is perfectly legitimate for a scientist to search for the chemical or genetic correlates of Christianity, communism or anything else. The Szaszian point is that even if a scientist discovered a 1:1 correlation between having a gene and being a Christian that would not prove Christianity to be a disease. To reach that kind of conclusion it would be necessary to show that individuals with the ‘Christian gene’ are literally unable – not merely unwilling – to think rationally about their worldview; to show, in economic terms, that Christian belief is a constraint rather than a choice.

7. Conclusion

Economists recognize the benefits of specialization. Only with hesitation, then, can economists focus their attention on an unfamiliar discipline and conclude that experienced professionals have been making elementary mistakes. However inconsistent psychiatry’s main theses seem to be with basic consumer theory, one might think it foolhardy to conclude that they are wrong.

At the same time, economists also recognize not only that rent-seeking is a ubiquitous force, but that most rent-seekers create and internalize public-interested justifications for their activities (Klein 1994). It is not overreaching for economists to criticize domestic auto makers’ arguments for protectionism. The auto makers know more about the details of their own industry, but economists are better at interpreting those details. Equally importantly, economists are trained to consider the costs of a policy for everyone in society, not merely groups with the most political influence.

From a rent-seeking perspective, skepticism about psychiatry is common sense. Rent-seeking is only a side activity for the auto industry, but it lies at the core of psychiatry. As Szasz (1990: 178) puts it, ‘The business of psychiatry is to provide society with excuses disguised as diagnoses, and with coercions justified as treatments’. Like lobbyists, one of psychiatrists’ main jobs is to argue in favor of exceptions. Some explain why their client should not have to pay the normal price for his behavior; others, why a person willing to pay the normal price for his behavior should be prevented from engaging in it nonetheless.

From this perspective, the divide between an intermediate economics textbook and the DSM is predictable. Consumer theory does not make an exception for extreme preferences. On the contrary, the more heterogeneous preferences are, the more important it is to charge uniform prices. Making people pay the full social cost of their behavior is the way that we find out if their preferences are as extreme as they say. The DSM avoids these conclusions by redefining extreme behavior to be a ‘disease like any other’. ‘Some people prefer to have mental disorders’ then sounds as implausible as ‘some people prefer to be sick’.

Nevertheless, people with extreme preferences often create negative externalities, especially for their families. Some economists might conclude that the psychiatric perspective on mental illness is scientifically mistaken but pragmatically useful. Political constraints make it difficult to regulate preferences merely because they are extreme. Using the obscurantist language of mental illness helps circumvent these constraints.

Conversely, there are efficiency reasons for political reluctance to regulate extreme preferences. Most obviously, there is the Coasean argument: If familial side payments are insufficient to induce normal behavior, it is a sign that the deviant values his deviancy more than his family values his normalcy. Calling extreme preferences ‘diseases’ makes it easy to misinterpret unwanted treatment as a benefit for the patient rather than a cost.

Treating extreme preferences as a disease also opens up a wide range of moral hazard problems. The Americans with Disabilities Act specifically refuses to count sexual behavior disorders, compulsive gambling, kleptomania, pyromania and substance use disorders resulting from current use of illegal drugs.24 But the moral hazard problem of the covered disorders – such as alcoholism – is probably comparable or greater.

‘Economic imperialism’ has often led economists to study another discipline and defend what until then had been an unpopular minority view. If the isomorphism between Szasz’s view and basic consumer theory is genuine, the economics of mental illness will be no exception. Economists have a great deal to learn from psychiatry, but at the same time economists need to make the difficult argument that the Szaszian view is far from crazy. In fact, it is good economics.

Notes

Psychiatrists now prefer to talk in terms of ‘having a mental disorder’ rather than ‘being mentally ill’ (APA 2000: xxxi, emphasis added). For the sake of readability, I use both expressions interchangeably.

The disorder of ADHD was first introduced in the DSM-III-R (APA 1987), but this was essentially a relabeling of the DSM-III’s (APA 1980) Attention Deficit Disorder. The latter was however a significant change relative to its precursor, ‘hyperkinetic reaction of childhood (or adolescence)’ in the DSM-II (APA 1968).

For a complete bibliography, see http://www.szasz.com/publist.html

Relatively new religions with small numbers of members – often called ‘cults’ – have however been subject to a degree of psychiatric stigma (Iannacone 2003). If a very small group (usually a couple or a family) shares a common delusion, its members may be diagnosed with shared psychotic disorder (APA 2000: 334).

Except in tone, the latter description almost exactly matches one from the biography of John Nash: ‘Nash was choosing the ‘‘path of most resistance,’’ and one that captured his radical sense of alienation. Such ‘‘extreme contrariness’’ aimed at cultural norms has long been a hallmark of a developing schizophrenic consciousness. In ancestor-worshipping Japan the target may be the family, in Catholic Spain the Church. Nash particularly desired to supercede the old laws that had governed his existence, and, quite literally, to substitute his own laws, and to escape, once and for all, from the jurisdiction under which he had once lived’ (Nasar 1998: 271).

Breggin (1991) however notes that most claims about ‘imbalances’ are tautologous: If a drug changes behavior in a desired way, the drug ipso facto ‘corrects an imbalance’. The Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry’s entry on lithium certainly fits this pattern: ‘Theories abound, but the explanation for lithium’s effectiveness remains unknown. Patients are often told it corrects a biochemical imbalance, and, for many, this explanation suffices. There is no evidence that bipolar mood disorder is a lithium deficiency state or that lithium works by correcting such a deficiency’ (quoted in Breggin 1991: 174).

Breggin (1991: 60) raises the question of what ‘counts’ as successful treatment. It is clear that psychiatric drugs and electroshock make people more docile and apathetic, but other benefits are much more questionable. ‘Since drugged patients become much less communicative, sometimes nearly mute, it’s not surprising that they say less about their hallucinations and delusions. Had the investigators paid attention, they would have noticed that the patients also said less about their religious and political convictions as well as about their favorite sport or hobby.’

For an especially thoughtful critique, see Seavey (2002).

Admittedly, today’s constraining diseases may stem from yesterday’s lifestyle choices. I might be sick today because I smoked or even deliberately drank bacteria. But the same holds for more familiar cases. For example, my current wage depends on my past work experience.

The latter clause is necessary because an ailment might have an incubation period or go through cycles of outbreak and remission.

One exception is dissociative identity disorder, commonly referred to as ‘multiple personality disorder’ (APA 2000: 529).

I would like to thank an anonymous referee for raising this question.

See for example the profile of ‘Andy: A Hyperactive Child’ in Breggin (1991: 275–6).

Thus, if a person has lexicographic preferences, they will choose death rather than change their behavior, even though life was inside their choice set.

BehaveNet 2004. http://www.behavenet.com/capsules/disorders/delusion.htm

Perhaps a better comparison could be drawn between Nash’s decision and Denethor’s suicide oration in The Return of the King: ‘‘‘I would have things as they were in the days of my life,’’ answered Denethor, ‘‘and in the days of my long-fathers before me: to be the Lord of this City in peace, and leave my chair to a son after me, who would be his own master and no wizard’s pupil. But if doom denies this to me, then I will have naught: neither life diminished, nor love halved, nor honour abated’’’ (Tolkien 1994: 836).

Once Nash wanted to abandon delusional thinking, then, his dieting analogy suggests the possible relevance of self-control problems or hyperbolic discounting (Ainslie 1992). But this would still be a poor model of Nash’s condition during the many years when he felt little desire to change.

A third hypothesis that must explain part of the data is that the delusions are deliberate fabrications. As Szasz (1990: 117) succinctly remarks, ‘If a man lies about his car so he . . . can get more money for it, that is rational economic behavior; if he lies about himself to get attention, that is irrational madness. We respond to the former by bargaining about the price, to the latter by treating mental illness.’

Political ‘true believers’ who pass the Gun-to-the-Head Test are rarer still. Even in the modern world, suicide attacks are chiefly committed by religious rather than secular zealots (Iannacone 2003).

See for example Nasar (1998, especially pp. 260, 330–1).

As Jesus maintained according to Matthew 26: 51–53: ‘With that, one of Jesus’ companions reached for his sword, drew it out and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear. ‘‘Put your sword back in its place,’’ Jesus said to him, ‘‘for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Do you think that I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?’’ ’ (The Holy Bible 1984: 740–1).

The DSM curiously overlooks this point in an especially pertinent case: ‘In some cultures, visual or auditory hallucinations with a religious content may be a normal part of religious experience (e.g. seeing the Virgin Mary or hearing God’s voice)’ (APA 2000: 306). Presumably this does not mean that millions of devout believers have malfunctioning eyes and ears.

Note that even if you did experience auditory hallucinations, it hardly follows that you have to obey them. The Son of Sam killer claimed to follow a dog’s orders (Szasz 1997: 206–7). Assuming he was not lying (as he later admitted he was), one could still ask: Do you always do what you’re told?

http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/ada/reg2.html

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#mental illness #psychiatry #thomas szasz #law and economics #choice #rationality #heterogeneous preferences #anti-psychiatry #schizophrenia #hallucinations #economics #consumer theory #economic imperialism #behavior

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Facebook Ads vs Google Ads: Which Traffic to Run For Me?

For company owner, it’s a typical concern: When it involves Facebook advertisements vs. Google advertisements, where is your spending plan much better invested?

The response, nonetheless, isn’t as the concern. And also it hardly ever is, particularly when you match 2 sector titans versus each various other.

One one side, Google has actually gone far for itself as the net’s best online search engine. On the various other, Facebook is where greater than a 4th of the globe remains in touch with buddies. Both are important areas to market– however, for various factors. For your following project, which you pick depends upon a number of aspects. A meaning of both kinds of marketing.

What is Facebook Ads?

Facebook marketing is a paid system that permits organisations to offer top quality messages to individuals of the globe’s biggest social media. Placements on Facebook consist of the information feed, the sidebar, as well as the target market network on mobile.

What is Google Ads?

Google marketing is a paid system that permits brand names to magnify their messaging throughout the Google network. That consists of over 2 million sites on its display screen network as well as, on its search network, the outcomes web pages of 3.5 billion day-to-day searches.

Facebook Ads vs. Google Ads

Both Google as well as Facebook have reach that includes all edges of the net. Google’s display screen network gets to 90% of individuals on-line, as well as searches in its exclusive engine have actually covered a trillion annually. Facebook is the globe’s biggest social media, with over 2.2 billion individuals.

Advertisers are familiar with either network–Google and Facebook very own 60% of electronic marketing bucks worldwide. With Google controling, it’s clear, there’s something for everybody on the network– yet at what price? Right here are a couple of points you’ll wish to take into consideration prior to you pick one over the various other.

How granular your targeting demands to be

As we understand also well, Facebook maintains an Everest-sized hill of information on its individuals. Despite the fact that it’s reduced connections with third-party information enthusiasts, the social media still permits marketers accessibility to a chest of target market info, which is largely provided by individuals.

” People share practically every imaginable information of their lives on Facebook,” says the WordStream team “From conference as well as weding companions to the birth of kids or the party of brand-new profession steps, Facebook’s individuals share the pleasures as well as success of life’s turning points with their buddies as well as networks every day. They additionally look for as well as eat material that straightens with a substantial variety of individual passions, ideas, ideological backgrounds, as well as worths, offering marketers with a distinct chance to customize marketing messaging to target market in means formerly thought about difficult, or perhaps unthinkable.”

Google, on the various other hand, offers advertisements contextually based upon key phrases as well as habits. It has no storage space of individual info that can contrast to Facebook’s. That makes Facebook the option of marketers whose item might focus around a particular information in somebody’s life, like the birth of a kid.

If targeting uniqueness is what you’re after, several marketing professionals concur that Facebook is where to begin.

Joe Castro elaborates:

If the purchase of your product or service strongly correlates based on specific life events, then Facebook is most likely your best option. Facebook has powerful targeting capabilities such as being able to target based on life-changing events. For instance, targeting those who have become recently engaged or married, those turning 65 (Medicare insurance), or those who recently had a new baby are examples of life events that can all be targeted with precision via Facebook ads and not as easily or effective through AdWords.

What you’re promoting

Google has reach as well as standing on its side, yet when it involves advertisement imaginative, Facebook triumphes. Styles like the immersive Canvas (currently referred to as “Instant Experience”) can make an item display out of a customer’s display, 360 video clip can transform a smart phone right into a home window to the globe, as well as lead advertisements can produce leads directly from the system.

Facebook’s interactive advertisement kinds make the social media an excellent option for organisations promoting streamlined items, or enjoyable offerings that offer themselves to aesthetic demo.

In comparison, Google’s advertisement kinds are myriad, yet they’re much much less interesting. For interaction, choose Facebook.

If your advertising campaign has viral possibility, the capacity to such as, comment, as well as share will just contribute to its reach.

According to Emily Reiffer:

You should consider whether the product you are selling is best suited to Facebook where users can broadcast to their engagement with your product to their thousands of friends, like a cool T-shirt company that mainly sells to younger customers or Google remarketing if you are selling wholesale toilet paper. That’s not to say that all B2B remarketing should be done on Google though, the important thing to remember is how engaging is the thing you are actually selling?

Your Market and Industry

Ultimately, where you choose to allot your spending plan might depend upon the sector you’re in. Google Ads is recognized to attract high-value web traffic in pick service rounds. And also as even more organisations in those rounds group to the network, bidding process extremely on key phrases pertinent to you, they drive price per click up.

This isn’t to state you should not make use of Google advertisements, just that you might locate much less competitors on Facebook. And also much less competitors equates to reduce CPC. In your sector, it might make good sense to begin on Facebook.

John Castro explains based on experience:

There are certain industries or sub-industries that are crazy expensive from a CPC perspective. For example, if you are considering advertising any of these keywords on Google, and you do not have an insanely large budget, you might want to reconsider. I have firsthand experience working in higher education, finance, legal, and healthcare; all are extremely competitive within AdWords and therefore very difficult to be successful in..

The objective of your project

The objective of marketing, eventually, is to bring in customers as well as maintain them. However, not every advertisement goes with the sale. Like participants of a group or service, each project plays a distinct function in completing that best objective. Right here are a couple of smaller sized objectives you might be thinking about for your following advertisement team:

Top-funnel objectives: At the biggest component of your channel, the top, is where site visitors start to find out of your brand name as well as its option. They could adhere to as well as involve with your social media sites accounts, or perhaps look for info on a specific trouble, state, whether Facebook advertisements or Google advertisements are best for their service. So, usual means of gauging recognition of your brand name are:

Website check outs

Social media communication

Social media reach

Blog checks out

Social shares

Newsletter memberships

Middle-funnel objectives: Where the channel begins to diminish in dimension is where leads start to get rid of choices within the exact same classification of service or product. A service attempting to determine success at the center of the channel might do so with:

Session size

Bounce price

Case research downloads

Email opens up

Email click-throughs

Landing web page check outs

Webinar signups

Demo signups

Bottom-funnel objectives: The base of your channel is where leads decide to acquire your item or select an additional. Some usual means to determine bottom-funnel success:

Sales

Revenue

Gross earnings

Sales web page conversion price

So why do these phases issue? They associate to the individuals of each network.

Facebook attracts attention as a top-funnel titan, with the capacity to spread out viral recognition that Google can not match. Social is where individuals most likely to search as well as share things that matter to them. Those points are hardly ever center as well as bottom-funnel project product.

Instead, what is successful on Facebook are photos, video clips, as well as messages that stimulate or captivate feeling. This “Alexa sheds her voice” advertisement from Amazon, which has actually acquired almost 50 million sights at the time of this message, is a terrific instance of such a viral project:

    By contrast, a Facebook project that tried to market devices of Alexa would likely be much much less effective than this refined, light-hearted take a look at the item.

Google, on the various other hand, defeats Facebook when it involves attracting bottom-funnel web traffic. The factor is the intent of AdWords searchers.

By “intent” we’re describing a searcher’s requirement for a remedy to their inquiry. That’s why you browse to a search engine in the very first area.

When that inquiry includes keyword expressions pertinent to a Google marketer’s service, an advertisement on the matching online search engine results web page shows up. These advertisements drive searchers to touchdown web pages where they can declare a deal pertinent to their option. A Google advertisement could route them to a web page where they can test the software program for complimentary if they’re looking for e-mail advertising software program. Right here’s an instance from SendGrid:

Are you B2B or B2C?

In a blog post that takes a great take a look at both Facebook as well as Google, Saunder Schroeder makes the case that which system you pick depends upon whether you’re marketing to clients or organisations.

” In basic,” he claims, “the top quality of B2B web traffic as well as leads you survive Facebook has a tendency to be less than what you survive AdWords. Your CPC could be $1.00, yet if you’re driving the incorrect web traffic, you’re not in fact conserving any type of loan.”

But, more affordable normally implies reduced top quality. We understand Facebook web traffic will certainly be a lot less professional than Google Ads web traffic, which teems with intent. Still, this is no worry, claims Schroeder, “due to the fact that the CPC is a lot reduced on Facebook, your cost-per-conversion is still reduced with Facebook than you see on AdWords. State you have an 8% conversion price on Google AdWords as well as a 3% conversion price on Facebook:

If you’re paying $8 per click on Google Ads, each conversion costs you $100 If you’re paying $0,

70 per click Facebook, each Facebook conversion expenses you $2333″

This boils down to greater than just how huge your spending plan is. It’s concerning investing as successfully as feasible. With a greater conversion price on one network, it might appear ROI is greater there. The reality might be you’re paying even more per conversion.

As for B2C? “That’s Facebook’s domain,” he adds. The reason, according to Schroeder, is the strikingly low cost of clicks on the network in comparison to Google Ads:

Unlike B2B marketing, where your LTV can easily absorb a relatively high CPC, B2C advertising is much more cost sensitive. For our average B2C client, the cost-per-click is around $0.90, although this can range from $0.05-3.00. In contrast, these clients pay around $8.00 for clicks on AdWords.

Breaking down the numbers

In the instance over, 1,000 clicks Google at $8 each will certainly cost you $8,000, while 1,000 clicks Facebook at $0.70 each will certainly set you back $700 With a conversion price of 8% on Google, you’ll have made 80 conversions from those thousand clicks. On Facebook, with a 3% conversion price, you’ll have made30 On Facebook, $700 for 30 conversions standards to $2333 per conversion.

That implies you might invest 10 times a lot more on Facebook– producing 300 conversions for $7,000– as well as invest a thousand much less than it set you back to transform 80 individuals on Google. Frequently, marketing professionals obtain captured up in conversion price, yet greater conversion price does not ensure performance.

Facebook Ads vs. Google Ads: A last appearance

As holds true in several contrasts of networks as well as devices, the response’s , as well as it hardly ever needs to be one or the various other. Facebook as well as Google can function incredibly with each other, particularly when it involves remarketing.

With the Facebook Pixel as well as Google retargeting, marketers can attract site visitors back to their touchdown web pages when they do not transform by offering remarketing advertisements throughout both networks. Several marketing professionals in fact advise beginning with remarketing on both networks.

When it involves where you must invest the majority of your spending plan, there’s no right or incorrect response. Just, it depends upon which functions ideal for you. Allow these factors to consider direct you if you’re simply beginning, yet remain to accumulate information on which functions best, as well as readjust appropriately.

  The post Facebook Ads vs Google Ads: Which Traffic to Run For Me? appeared first on Daily Job Killer.

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Starting a Recruiting Business: 5 Major Considerations

If you are considering a start-up in the recruiting industry your timing is good. The simple fact is that there are more folks looking for employment now than ever before. Another factor to consider is that with increasing technology a recruiting businesses can be a low cost venture compared to many other businesses.

If you are online searching, you have certainly come across the hundreds of programs and books sold for between $500 and $5,000 promises to teach anyone how to successfully start a recruiting business. I have reviewed a few of these programs and some are very well written by proven experts in the field. That being said, I have worked with a few recruiters in my business over the years and I will provide you with the five major considerations when started a recruiting business for free!

Step one: If you're not currently in the business do some local market research. You will want to make a list of the recruiting businesses in your area. You are looking for unfilled niches; especially in areas that you personally have an understanding in. For example, is there a Retail Management recruiter in your area? If not, you will be able to easily establish yourself as a recruiter in this niche. There will likely be several niches that you will be able to fill.

Step two: Take a good look into the common software applications that recruiters frequently use. Appraisal Smart is a very popular option. There are many different options and they vary widely based on your needs and cost. Research what evaluation tools are commonly used for the particular niches that are you're interested in. You will find there are a variety of tools available or if you feel confident that you understand the needs of a particular niche develop your own evaluation tools.

Learn more on how to start a recruiting business.

Step three: Develop a standard process for interviewing. Make sure that each applicant is asked a number of questions to build a picture of past experiences, character, and skill-sets. Your application needs to have contact info, education, past experience, and references. There are many online programs and websites to help you with this step.

Step four: Look to your past employers, associates, friends, and anyone else you have a rapport with that has employment needs. Let them know what you are doing and they will likely give you feedback on what their needs are. This will help you develop your vision. Find out which of them has employment or placement needs. Of course, let them know that you are now recruiting and ask them if they would be willing to let you help them out. Determine what these employers needs are in a new hire. What are the desired experience, skills, education, and overall qualifications that they are looking for? Than focus on filling those positions with the best candidates possible. This is a great way to get your business started!

Step 5: Decide where you are going to work from. Are you going to be working from home, or should you look for inexpensive office space? Are you going to be interviewing candidates in person? If so what office needs do you have? Obviously, if you are going to be running your recruiting business over the internet and phone you will have other considerations.

I have included a list of other good ideas to get you up and going. If you are the type of person that needs a very detailed step by step plan, you will likely be better off spending the money on a more detailed roadmap. I hope that this article sheds light on how easy it actually is to start this type of business. If you believe you can work through each step this is likely something you can do with very little startup investment.

1) Go to job fairs when ever possible. You will likely make good contacts and get useful information. Develop a file of perspective employers.

2) Think big (geographically) in your recruiting. Especially if you are online there is no reason why you can't recruit in other states and even countries.

3) Check out the countless online websites for recruiting. You will find a lot of good ideas and start to see some possible niches to focus on.

4) Encourage young working professionals and students to submit job applications. This is a great way to make a list of potential candidates.

5) Get in touch with as many companies a possible concerning their workforce requirements and needs. Remember your job is going to be connecting people. They more in your network the better.

6) If possible, draw on experienced people in the recruiting industry. There are many forms of compensation plans and different structures to consider. Be open to working with others who have the potential to get your business up and going.

I certainly hope that this article has provided you will the information you were searching for. For people who are good at networking and can understand the needs of businesses this is a great industry to be involved in. I have considered starting a recruiting business myself over the years, but have been too busy with other projects.

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