“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” -Oscar Wilde, De Profundis, 1905
A Dangerous Method is an upcoming historical film, directed by David Cronenberg and starring Viggo Mortensen, Michael Fassbender, Keira Knightley and Vincent Cassel. The screenplay was adapted by Academy Award-winning writer Christopher Hampton from his 2002 stage play The Talking Cure, itself based on the 1993 non-fiction book by John Kerr, A Most Dangerous Method.
PLOT : Set on the eve of the World War I, A Dangerous Method is based on the turbulent relationships between fledgling psychiatrist Carl Jung, his mentor Sigmund Freud, and Sabina Spielrein, the troubled but beautiful young woman who comes between them.
The Top 5 Regrets People Have on Their Deathbed
1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I didn’t work so hard.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
Source: The Next Web
Image: Beauty Without Regret, by Makoto Fujimura
Do bacteria control your brain?
A new study has found evidence suggesting that you are not what you eat, so much as you are what’s living in your gut.
Link: via Boing Boing
Fearless. Focused. Inspirational.
Climber Ueli Steck climbing Eiger, setting speed solo record.
This is what schizophrenia looks like at the molecular level
What you’re looking at are neurons grown from a schizophrenic person. An incredible study, published today in Nature, reveals how scientists grew schizophrenic brain cells to understand the inner workings of this still-mysterious neurological disorder
Read more: http://io9.com/#!5791805/this-is-what-schizophrenia-looks-like-at-the-molecular-level
How Perfectionism Can Lead to Procrastination (and What to Do About It)
It’s hard to get anything done if it needs to be perfect, because if you’re constantly criticizing the work there is always more work to be done. But the real problem comes in when you don’t even want to do the work because making it perfect seems too daunting. This is how perfectionism can lead to procrastination, and here’s what you can do about it.
Continue Reading @ LifeHacker.
Note to self: meditate
Link: How Meditation May Change the Brain, New York Times.
Image: Floating Meditation by Duy Huynh, unknown year.
More on the controversy that is the upcoming DSM-5
Link: Inside the Battle to Defend Mental Illness,Wired Magazine
Research supports that the human amygdala plays a pivotal role in triggering a state of fear and that its absence precludes the experience of fear itself.
Link: NY Times. Humans, Like Animals, Are Fearless Without Amygdala
Link: Current Biology. The Human Amygdala and the Induction and Experience of Fear
Image: Funambule, by Eric Margot
Image: Antibody Stain, 2008
More: Portraits of the Mind: Visualizing the Brain from Antiquity to the 21st Century
The Three Christs
In 1959, social psychologist Milton Rokeach wanted to test the strength of self-delusion. So, he gathered three patients, all of whom identified themselves as Jesus Christ, and made them live together at Ypsalanti State Hospital in Michigan for two years.
Rokeach hoped the Christs would give up their delusional identities after confronting others who claimed to be the same person. But that’s not what happened. At first, the three men quarreled constantly over who was holier. According to Rokeach, one Christ yelled, “You oughta worship me!” To which another responded, “I will not worship you! You’re a creature! You better live your own life and wake up to the facts!”
Unable to turn the other cheek, the three Christs often argued until punches were thrown. Eventually, however, they each explained away their conflicting identities. One believed, correctly, that the other two were mental patients. Another rationalized the presence of his companions by claiming that they were dead and being operated by machines.
At the end of their two-year stay, each man still believed he was the one and only son of God. In fact, Rokeach concluded that their Jesus identities may have become more embedded after being confronted with other Christs.
Twenty years later, he renounced his manipulations and methods, writing, “I really had no right, even in the name of science, to play God and interfere around the clock with their daily lives.”
The experiment was published in a 1964 book, The Three Christs of Ypsalanti.
Links: Mental Floss | 4 Bizarre Experiments That Should Never Be Repeated; Slate | Jesus, Jesus, Jesus
